Can I fake has_one :through?

I’m having a difficult time wrapping my head around a set of models
and their associations and seeing how they map into Rails. I’ll try
to lay out my problem using the has_many and belongs_to structures. I
have a RuleSpace, a Rule, and a Subject.

A RuleSpace has_many Rules
A RulesSpace has_many Subjects through Rules

A Rule belongs_to (many) RuleSpaces
A Rule has_many Subjects

A Subject has_one Rule
A Subject has_one RuleSpace

So given a single Subject I should be able to find a single Rule and
a single RuleSpace. Going the other way, given a RuleSpace I should
find many Subjects.

I’m thinking the model definitions should look like this:

class RuleSpace < AR::Base
has_many :rules
has_many :subjects, :through => :rules
end

class Rule < AR::Base
belongs_to :rule_space
belongs_to :subject
end

class Subject < AR::Base
has_one :rule
has_many :rule_spaces, :through => :rules
end

I’m not sure at all that a call to Subject.rule_spaces will return
only a single element. Will #has_one enforce this? Is this legal?

cr

On May 11, 2006, at 10:46 PM, [email protected] wrote:

has_many :rules
has_many :rule_spaces, :through => :rules
end

I’m not sure at all that a call to Subject.rule_spaces will return
only a single element. Will #has_one enforce this? Is this legal?

Answering my own question here… I continued to search the list
archives and found a similar question on March 31 2006.

Josh S. wrote:

You can simulate has_one with a has_many with an :order and :limit
=> 1
(though the naming is still plural, not singular).

So I guess that means I change my Subject model to look like this:

class Subject < AR::Base
has_many :rules
has_many :rule_spaces, :through => :rules, :order => ASC, :limit => 1
end

I’m going to code this up for real and run it through some tests to
see what happens. I wonder what interesting ways it will break. :slight_smile:

cr