Associating with different classes

Rails
1

Dear Railers,

I am toying with a new project and have a schema design question.

I have a tree-like node structure. Each of the nodes will be
associated with a single object. This associated object can be of a
variety of types.

I represent the tree through a Node class which acts_as_tree. Now
imagine three other classes–Animals, Fruits and Vegetables. Each
node will have an association with one object of ONE type. The object
types are different enough to make STI impractical.

I am thinking of the following: adding a table called associations
and holding three columns–node_id, associated_type, associated_id.
Thus:

class Node < AR::B
has_one :association
end

class Association < AR::B
belongs_to :node
end

A method of the Association class will pull up the necessary Animal,
Fruit or Vegetable, depending on the associated_type and
associated_id. A method of the Node class will request the actual
associated object from the association itself.

Any thoughts on this?

Many thanks in advance for any ideas,
Nickolay

2

Nickolay K. wrote:

Dear Railers,

I am toying with a new project and have a schema design question.

I have a tree-like node structure. Each of the nodes will be
associated with a single object. This associated object can be of a
variety of types.

I represent the tree through a Node class which acts_as_tree. Now
imagine three other classes–Animals, Fruits and Vegetables. Each
node will have an association with one object of ONE type. The object
types are different enough to make STI impractical.

I am thinking of the following: adding a table called associations
and holding three columns–node_id, associated_type, associated_id.

Check out polymorphism for belongs_to and has_one/has_many. It does
exactly what you describe. Look up the :polymorphic option on belongs_to
to start.

–
Josh S.
http://blog.hasmanythrough.com

3

Check out polymorphism for belongs_to and has_one/has_many. It does
exactly what you describe. Look up the :polymorphic option on
belongs_to
to start.

Thanks a lot for the tip Josh!

I found http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/
PolymorphicAssociations on the wiki and read through it. I have
written some preliminary tests and they pass as far as what I wanted
to do. :slight_smile:

Cheers!
Nickolay