First of all, I love Ruby on Rails. I have an intermediate
understanding of PHP, JavaScript, DOM and CSS, and that’s the extent of
my programming experience. I’m developing an online game’s web presence
with another colleague. We’re the only two technical guys on a team of
+10 content developers. So, baring all that in mind, here are my
questions with a bit of background information:
We have a table for characters. They can have items (weapons, armor,
etc), skills, spells and other things, like languages. They each have a
class and race.
My question is about how to set up the different relationships between
these tables.
Are there any good, in depth tutorials (with extensive examples) on how
to set up relationships between tables?
For instance, I know that the relationship between a character and its
class would be:
belongs_to, has_many
But how would I set up the relationship between characters and other
items? If a character has multiple “skills,” how should I set up the
other tables? Would I use an “in between” table? Would it be easier to
serialize the information? If so, how does that work?
I’m not terribly concerned about portability. We use DreamHost as our
host, who is wonderful enough to support Ruby, and we plan to stay with
them.
I apologize for the gruesomely newbish form of this inquiry, but I would
love to further the use of Ruby on the Web.
Sincerely,
Adam
Are there any good, in depth tutorials (with extensive examples) on how
to set up relationships between tables?
For instance, I know that the relationship between a character and its
class would be:
belongs_to, has_many
But how would I set up the relationship between characters and other
items? If a character has multiple “skills,” how should I set up the
other tables? Would I use an “in between” table? Would it be easier to
serialize the information? If so, how does that work?
I’d suggest starting with by Googling about database normalisation
techniques.
What you’re describing isn’t essentionally a RoR issue.
Then purchase a copy of the Pragmatic Programers book and learn how
Active Record interacts with DB tables.
Finally expect to be doing a fair bit of Googling/posting on why things
don’t work. I spend yesterday afteroon wondering why my HABTM
relationships weren’t being created only to find there a bug where a
model with >1 HABTM relationships . Its documented and theres a fix but
I had to search the postings for the answer.
Tony
On Monday, February 13, 2006, at 2:03 PM, Anthony G. wrote:
Are there any good, in depth tutorials (with extensive examples) on how
to set up relationships between tables?
I’d suggest starting with by Googling about database normalisation
techniques.
What you’re describing isn’t essentionally a RoR issue.
Right. You sound like you need a book about database design in general.
You can pick up a bit about about databases from reading Rails
tutorials, but it’s not the whole story. I suggest the book “Database
Design for Mere Mortals” which is actually a pretty easy read and will
introduce you to planning your databases, normalization, joins, and all
that fun stuff.
Andrew Otwell wrote:
On Monday, February 13, 2006, at 2:03 PM, Anthony G. wrote:
Are there any good, in depth tutorials (with extensive examples) on how
to set up relationships between tables?
I’d suggest starting with by Googling about database normalisation
techniques.
What you’re describing isn’t essentionally a RoR issue.
Right. You sound like you need a book about database design in general.
You can pick up a bit about about databases from reading Rails
tutorials, but it’s not the whole story. I suggest the book “Database
Design for Mere Mortals” which is actually a pretty easy read and will
introduce you to planning your databases, normalization, joins, and all
that fun stuff.
It may sound strange, but O’Reilly published a book on Microsoft Access
(of all things) a while ago, and it contained a fairly concise,
approachable, and detailed treatment of normalization. Since it’s a bit
dated, you might find a copy for a good price; the chapters on Access
may not be current, but the database theory sections are still very
useful.
=Jim
Thanks for the advice, everyone who responded to my inquiry! Sounds
like it’s time to make a trip to B&N!