How to specify a 3-way relation in Active Record?

Rails
1

I have 3 database tables, Users, Projects and Roles.There is a 3-way
relation between them which indicates with what role a user is allocated
to
a specific project.
I have a join table with 3 columns as the foreign key’s to 3 tables
mentioned above.

The only solution that comes to my mind is following,

  1. Have a model for the join table having
    belongs_to :user,:role,:user

Is there a solution where I can do away with the model for the join
table(the way habtm does)?

Regards,
Jatinder

2

A user has_many projects, a Project has_many Users, but each role is
associated with 1 user + 1 Project … i suggest to use has_many
:through and use a join table “project_meberships”

class User
has_many :project_memberships
has_many :projects, :through => :project_memberships
end
class Project
has_many :project_memberships
has_many :users, :through => :project_memberships
end
class ProjectMembership
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :project
belongs_to :role
end
class Role
has_many :project_memberships
end

the table “project_memberships” should look something like this:
id #primary key, auto increment
user_id
project_id
role_id
(additional fields like description)

This assumes you have pre-defined Roles like Admin, Teamleader,
Participant etc. pp. in the roles table.

@user = User.find(1)
role = @user.project_memberships(1).role
project = @user.project_memberships(1).project

You might want to read this about eager loading those associations with
a nested :include in the find command.