Convention for multiple id reference

Rails
#1

Hi,

Here’s the thing :
I have a table with languages (name, label, id).

languages
id
name
label

I’d like another table people with primary_language and
secondary_langage
that should refer to a language_id.

people
id
firstname
familyname
primary_language -> language_id
secondary_language -> language_id

Because I got 2 references, I don’t know how I can do. I think I have to
explicitly say in the Person and Language model that primary_language
and secondary_language is a language_id. How can I do ?

Thanks

#2

Here’s how the table would look:

people
id
firstname
familyname
primary_language -> primary_language_id
secondary_language -> secondary_language_id

And the class:

class Person
belongs_to :primary_language, :class_name => ‘Language’
belongs_to :secondary_language, :class_name => ‘Language’
end

Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) | http://blog.codevader.com/
(en)
João Pessoa, PB, +55 83 8867-7208

On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 10:12 AM, David N.

#3

For assigning the language id you need to assign the language_id before
saving the record. this should be

record.primary_language_id = language.id
record.secondary_language_id = language.id
record.save!

In your person model you can say,
belongs_to :primary_language, :class_name => “Language”, :foreign_key
=> “primary_language_id”
for the relation ship.
So in this case People.primary_language will be the language record.
As for the Rails coding use the column name as “primary_language_id”
instead of “primary_language”.

people
id
firstname
familyname
primary_language -> language_id
secondary_language -> language_id

Because I got 2 references, I don’t know how I can do. I think I have to
explicitly say in the Person and Language model that primary_language
and secondary_language is a language_id. How can I do ?

Thanks