Multiple Associations With The Same Object

Rails
1

I have a Company object which has multiple Contacts
(has_many/belongs_to) I would like one of the contacts to be the
primary contact. What’s the best way to do this? Right now I have:

create table companies (
id int not null auto_increment,
name varchar(50) not null,
primary_id int null,
constraint fk_company_primary_contact foreign key (primary_id)
references contacts(id),
primary key (id)
);

create table contacts (
id int not null auto_increment,
name varchar(100) not null,
company_id int not null,
primary key (id)
);

class Company < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :contacts
has_one :primary_contact,
:class_name => ‘Contact’

…
end

class

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base

belongs_to :company

…
end

Can someone help me?

2

I’ve not tried it, but I’d think you could do something like this:

class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :contacts
has_one :primary_contact
…
end

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :company
…
end

class PrimaryContact < Contact
end

Although you may have to add a “where clause” to the PrimaryContact
class to
define how to identify the primary contact.