# Has\_many :through with multiple paths **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 28, 2006, 2:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/has-many-through-with-multiple-paths/100345 "2006-07-28T14:54:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rurounijones)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 2:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/has-many-through-with-multiple-paths/100345/1 "2006-07-28T14:54:54Z")
Hi all. I am currently thinking about how to do the following: I have the following models. Team Person Team has various positions (manager, programmer etc.) I would like each one of those positions to reference one or more Person records. A single Person record could be on 6 different teams at the same time in different roles. the same person could even be on the same team multiple times in different roles. I am not 100% sure how to go about this. I am thinking that I will need something like an intermediate record. teams\_people id team\_id people\_id role I would then have (I think) to have methods in the Team model that will find each person in the @team.people array based on the role. I the end I want a view to have something like: Team Name Manager: Person1, Person 4 Programmer: Person2, Person 3 Designer: Person2 Lackey: Person3 With just a single find that :includes all the relevant people. I apologise if this isn’t very clear. The joys of not being a Ruby programmer but a Ruby dabbler 😉 RJ ---
**Author:** ![rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rurounijones)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 5:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/has-many-through-with-multiple-paths/100345/2 "2006-07-28T17:05:45Z")
RurouniJones wrote: > Hi all. > > I am currently thinking about how to do the following: > > I have the following models. > Team > Person > > Team has various positions (manager, programmer etc.) I would like each > one of those positions to reference one or more Person records. A single > Person record could be on 6 different teams at the same time in > different roles. the same person could even be on the same team multiple > times in different roles. > > I am not 100% sure how to go about this. I am thinking that I will need > something like an intermediate record. > > teams\_people > id > team\_id > people\_id > role > > I would then have (I think) to have methods in the Team model that will > find each person in the @team.people array based on the role. > > I the end I want a view to have something like: > > Team Name > Manager: Person1, Person 4 > Programmer: Person2, Person 3 > Designer: Person2 > Lackey: Person3 > > With just a single find that :includes all the relevant people. You’re definitely on the right track. I’d suggest naming the join model something like Membership (table name ‘memberships’ instead of ‘teams\_people’), which is the way to go when using has\_many :through instead of habtm. Your use of the ‘role’ field is exactly what I’d do. Here’s something I wrote that talks about working with this kind of join model and shows how you can use that to create convenient specialized accessors for the various roles: [http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/articles/2006/05/06/through\_gets\_uniq](http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/articles/2006/05/06/through_gets_uniq) I haven’t played around with using :include for that kind of setup, but I think you should just be able to :include the various specialized associations and it will do the right thing. – Josh S. [http://blog.hasmanythrough.com](http://blog.hasmanythrough.com) ---
**Author:** ![rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@rurounijones](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rurounijones)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/has-many-through-with-multiple-paths/100345/3 "2006-07-28T17:34:29Z")
Josh S. wrote: > I haven’t played around with using :include for that kind of setup, but > I think you should just be able to :include the various specialized > associations and it will do the right thing. > > – > Josh S. > [http://blog.hasmanythrough.com](http://blog.hasmanythrough.com) Ye gods! Thank you very much for the link. It is a stupendously good tutorial for this sort of thing. Thank you very much. Do you have plans on adding that to the wiki.rubyonrails site? (Or create a page that then links to the blog?) I use the Wiki site extensively (as I imagine others do to) and a page that has this information would be great. Many thanks RJ