Changing tables within rails app

Rails
1

Hi,

I want to know if my idea is possible within the rails framework.

I want to write a rails app that uses the same code to manage two
classes of widgets; “wired widgets” and “wireless widgets”.

For the most part, all the code to manage these two classes of widgets
will be identical. The only differing part are some of the underlying
field names in each respective db table (table: wired_widgets vs.
wireless_widgets).

In an effort to reduce code repetition and take advantage of db table
reflection, I want to share the same code base and just change which
table is being used.

I envision a select menu in the app to toggle between the
‘wired_widgets’ and ‘wireless_widgets’ tables. And subsequently the
reflective view,edit,create pages would reflect the slightly differing
db fields.

Does anyone know of a clever way to do such a thing within rails?

Thank you for any help.

Matt

–
Matt C. Wagner
Information Security Analyst

Network Intrusion Detection
Security Operations Center
Corporate Information Security
Wells Fargo Bank

2

Why not just make “wired” and “wireless” widgets properties of the
widget if
they contain the same info?

On 1/3/06, [email protected] [email protected]
wrote:

field names in each respective db table (table: wired_widgets vs.

Network Intrusion Detection
Security Operations Center
Corporate Information Security
Wells Fargo Bank

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–
Steven R.
web application & interface developer
http://www.zerium.com
[phone] 404-488-4364

3

Hi Matt,

You can use the Single Table Inheritance pattern w/ this one:

Database: table “widgets” (w/ all wired and unwired fields, plus “type”
column)
Models: “WiredWidget < Widget”, “UnwiredWidget < Widget” and “Widget <
ActiveRecord::Base”

Since STI has all fields for all “children” tables, your UnwiredWidget
model will have the same fields as WiredWidget ones. A quick-and-dirty
solution is to override the column_names method for ActiveRecord. So,
you can have something like this:

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base

def column_names
[“some field”, “other field”, …] if type == “WiredWidget”
[“some unwired field”, “other unwired field”, …] if type ==
“UnwiredWidget”
end

end

–
juca