Has_many through join table - join three tables?

Rails
1

Hi

Is it feasible or horribly wrong to include a boolean column to a join
table in order to ‘junction’ a join?

Imagine you want to map a journey that will comprise multiple flights
and train journeys.

train.rb

flight.rb

stages.rb

itinerary.rb

Itinerary has many flights or trains journeys through stages.

I could put a column for each id, train and flight, or I can put a
boolean flag that dictates whether the stage is a flight or train
journey and define in the model the foreign key in both cases. In the
case of the former, there will be a lot of null values so the latter
seems preferable. Maybe an answer is a further join table, but for the
purpose of this that is really not ideal.

So will this work ok or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks in
advance. :slight_smile:

2

2009/7/28 Mark D. [email protected]:

flight.rb

purpose of this that is really not ideal.

So will this work ok or am I barking up the wrong tree? Thanks in
advance. :slight_smile:

Have you considered using Single Table Inheritance so that train and
flight are two types of stages? Then an itinerary has many stages,
each of which is a flight or a train, or boat or whatever.

Colin

3

Hi Colin. Unfortunately in this case sti isn’t feasible. Sorry, I should
have pointed out that the scenario provided is a simplified
demonstration.

It occurs to me that this is a polymorphic has_many_through which led me
to this article:

http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2006/4/3/polymorphic-through

It’s a few years old but seems applicable.

Advice and experiences still very welcome. :slight_smile: