Class Table Inheritance

Rails
1

I’m trying to find a solution to this modeling problem I’m having in
Rails, mainly because of the lack of support for ClassTI in Rails.

I’m building a highly complex CMS which will be handling different
types of content groups (objects) which each have their own unique set
of attributes. For example:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base; end

class Game < Product; end;
class Movie < Product; end;
class Car < Product; end;

Normally this can be handled fine by STI but each model has a very
unique set of attributes.

product attributes:

  • id
  • title
  • description
  • created_on
  • updated_on

game attributes:

  • id
  • title [inherited]
  • description [inherited]
  • esrb_rating_id
  • game_platform_id
  • created_on [inherited]
  • updated_on [inherited]

movie attributes:

  • id
  • title [inherited]
  • description [inherited]
  • mpaa_rating_id
  • production_studio_id
  • created_on [inherited]
  • updated_on [inherited]

car attributes:

  • id
  • title [inherited]
  • description [inherited]
  • mpg_city
  • mpg_highway
  • created_on [inherited]
  • updated_on [inherited]

Can anyone suggest a good solution for me that will allow me to still
keep a DRY environment?

2

The first thing that pops into my head as I’m getting ready to walk out
the
door is:

Create an extra table for each of those sub-types that will use a
has_one,
belongs_to type of relationship with the STI table, keeping only the
extra
attributes that are specialized in the extra tables.

In the end, you’d end up with something like
c = Car.find(id)
c.title == ‘Blah’
c.car_attributes.mpg_city == 24

It seems a little less than perfect, but it’s the only thing I can think
of
in 3 minutes that will work.

3

Rick M. wrote:

class Movie < Product; end;

  • updated_on
    movie attributes:
  • title [inherited]
  • description [inherited]
  • mpg_city
  • mpg_highway
  • created_on [inherited]
  • updated_on [inherited]

Can anyone suggest a good solution for me that will allow me to still
keep a DRY environment?

Yes. Switch to PostgreSQL and use Class Table Inheritance plugin from
svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/clti/

–
Sava C.
ClTI plugin author