ActiveRecord foreign_key, composite key question

Rails
1

I have a question about a has_many + belongs_to relationship and how
ActiveRecord works. Consider two tables and related model classes:

create_table :projects do |t|
t.column :description, :text
t.column :fm_project_id, :integer
end

create_table :fm_project_divs do |t|
t.column :project_id, :integer
t.column :cat_id, :integer
t.column :name, :string
end

The projects table (class Project) has the rails standard ‘id’ primary
key.
The fm_project_divs table (class FmProjectDiv) does NOT - it’s a legacy
table and it actually has a composite key (project_id + cat_id), but not
defined here.
Apparently there is a required add-on to rails to support composite
keys…

A Project has_many fm_project_divs, and it is associated to the
fm_project_divs table by fm_project_id (of Project) mapping to
project_id (of FmProjectDiv).

Here are the model classes:
class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :fm_project_divs, :class_name => “FmProjectDiv”,
foreign_key => “project_id”
end

class FmProjectDiv < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :project, :class_name => “Project”,
:foreign_key => :fm_project_id
end

In experimenting with this, has_many on Project attempts to collect
fm_project_div records using ‘id’ (primary key) matching on
‘project_id’, which isn’t what I need.

I’m able to get around this by:
has_many :fm_project_divs,
:class_name => “FmProjectDiv”,
:finder_sql => ‘SELECT * FROM fm_project_divs WHERE project_id =
#{fm_project_id}’

Is this very basic relationship not possible (without using finder_sql)
be/c rails demands a primary key defined for FmProjectDiv? Would this
work as expected if the composite key add-on were used?

thanks,
bob

2

Your question is more advanced than I can answer but the first part
caught
my attention.

I created a project a while back that had a special ID column. To make
the
migration work right I had to use:

====++++====
class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :people, :primary_key => :contactid do |t|

the line above creates a table with contactid as the primary key

no traditional id column

see the person Model for more about setting the primary key to

something
besides id
t.column :address1, :string
t.column :address2, :string
t.column :address3, :string
t.column :city, :string
t.column :company, :string

====++++====

Then in the Person model it states:
set_primary_key :contactid

===

I have no idea if this will help.

Sunny

3

You might want to check out and use:

http://compositekeys.rubyforge.org/

Maurice
Fäh