On Tuesday, 3 April 2012 13:32:54 UTC-4, Ruby-Forum.com User wrote: > > (This is may be more of a db design question than a rails question.) > > Summary: > > I'm thinking of creating a single AR class to hold constant symbol > values and use it for :has_many_through relations whenever I need a > constant symbol. Is this a good idea or a bad idea? > > > Given your examples, I'm not convinced all of the things even need to BE in the database. One question I'd ask to help decide this is, "can an end-user meaningfully add a new one of these through the web interface?"
For example, "roles" typically would NOT be meaningful to add from the web interface - they require additional plumbing (unless you've got serious DB-driven RBAC already) in code above and beyond a simple name. On the other hand, "categories" on a blog are a classic example of something that belongs in the DB; there's no additional behavior expected, they're just labels that can be attached to other things. As to your original question, I'd lean towards "bad idea" - as others have pointed out, if the items in question are supposed to operate in separate domains they should be kept separate. This winds up simplifying lots of stuff - for instance, I can't think of any reason one would want to display a drop-down with a mishmash of natural resources and user roles, but a list of one or the other makes sense. If you're really just looking for the ability to attach context-sensitive labels, you may also want to look at acts_as_taggable_on and friends: https://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on which will do nearly all of the work for you. --Matt Jones -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rubyonrails-talk/-/9KYl2lVG9JMJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
