Association data clobbering (foreign keys too?)

Rails
1

Can someone please confirm or correct the following statements?

If I have the following tables

create table as (id int, […], b_id int);
create table bs (id int, […], a_id int);
create table as_bs (a_id int, b_id int);

and the associations woould be defined like this

class A << …
habtm :bs
belongs_to :b
end

so my Model A has a habtm collection of Bs plus a direct belongs_to
link to one B (and vice versa).

So

a = A.find(:first)
b = a.bs.first
a2 = b.a

might not give me back a, because b’s direct belongs_to a reference is
clobbered with the reference from the join table a_b (because the
foreign keys have the same name)?

Or does this only apply to non foreign key attributes?

There are no such problems if I’d make a_b a join model and have no
habtm, but a has_many :through instead?

What other options to circumvent this problem do I have (besides
renaming the foreign keys either in the model or join tables)?

TIA! - Bernd

2

Not sure I can help but I think you’re trying to create a HABTM between
model A and model B. That’s fairly straightforward.

It’s the other relationship I’m struggling to understand - is that a 1:1
1:many or many:many?

Let’s say it’s a 1:many, with model A has many Bs. You’d then want
has_many in the A model declaration, and belongs_to in the B
declaration. Also, you’d only want the foreign key column (a_id) in
table bs (and not belongs_to in A, also no foreign key column in as)

For sake of clarity, you might want to call this relationship something
else (has_many :alt_bs, and then explicitly state the table name and
foreign key in the has_many declaration, as per the API).

Does this help? If you can supply some more details that’d be good.

HTH

3

Chris T wrote:

For sake of clarity, you might want to call this relationship something
else (has_many :alt_bs, and then explicitly state the table name and
foreign key in the has_many declaration, as per the API).

Although I have some (little) experience with rails associations it
seems like I misunderstood the clobbering effects, because I expected
them to be “generated” on DB, not rails level.

So on other words, there are no ambiguity problems that are causing data
clobbering when I’m using the same foreign key names in the model and
join tables? (Although I already had this problem when one of the
foreign keys in a “legacy” join table has been named “id”, but that
might have been another problem).

Just to answer your question about the other relationship: This could
either be a 1:many or 1:1. In my example I used a completely symmetric
model. I’ll give an example with “real” objects:

table clients (
id int,
…,
address_id int – think of this as primary address
);

table addresses (
id int,
…,
client_id int – think of this as primary client (although this might
not make much sense)
);

table addresses_clients (
address_id int, – same foreign key name as in clients
client_id int – same foreign key name as in addresses
);

class Client < …
has_and_belongs_to_many :addresses
belongs_to :address # or should it better be
primary_address?
end

class Address < …
has_and_belongs_to_many :clients
belongs_to :client # or some other name
end

Now:

c = Client.find(1)
a = c.addresses.first # get one from the collection
c2 = a.client

Assuming that a.client is pointing to c, may I have clobbering effects
(a.client being “shadowed” by the client_id from the join table which
might point to some other client)?