Problem with large join table and ActiveRecord

Rails
1

Hello,

I’m having a hard time explaining this, so I hope i can say this
correctly. I have these tables:

people
id
fname
lname

departments
id
name

buildings
id
name
room

wtkeys
id
key_number
key_way

Issued_keys
id
people_id
department_id
building_id
wtkey_id
date_issued

My question is when i need to insert a new issued_key do I just do
something like:

    person.fname = "Robert"
    person.lname = "Boone"
    person.save!

    dept = Department.new
    dept.name = "IT"
    dept.save!

    building = Building.new
    building.name = "CC"
    building.save!

    wtkey = Wtkey.new
    wtkey.key_number = "1234"
    wtkey.key_way       = "AAAA"
    wtkey.save!

    issued_key = IssuedKey.new
    issued_key.people_id         = person.id
    issued_key.department_id  = dept.id
    issued_key.building_id       = building.id
    issued_key.wtkey_id           = wtkey.id
    issued_key.date_issued      = Time.now
    issued_key.save!

This seems very un-rails-like to me (but I could be wrong). Is there
there a better way to do this. And I won’t object to changing the
database.

Thanks,
Robert Boone