I have several classes with many_many relations used in my site. However, for one section of the site, if a given object being referenced does not have an active relation with an object it belongs_many_many with, the page will crash (fatal error when trying to retrieve that relation). I'm looking into fixing it, and was wondering if there was a way to create an association that each new instance of this object is given as a default until it can be associated with the correct object so as to avoid this kind of error. I'm looking into various ways to fix this issue, this is just one of them.
As an example, in my System, we have posts that each belong to a topic, which belongs to an aggregator page. Each post is displayed via the aggregator page. So to link the post on another page, I create the link by getting the post's topic(s), getting the first topic in the list (where the error occurs), then getting that topic's aggregator page, then getting the link of that page. If this method has a simpler or more elegant fix, I'm also amenable to changing it, this was just what came together relatively simply.
