Thanks all. Now I have the confidence to move forward. On Feb 5, 7:55 am, Matt Jones <[email protected]> wrote: > On Feb 4, 10:06 pm,VincentP <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > In my app, each user may have one of the 30 predefined occupations. > > Each occupation is a string of about 30 characters. Should I: > > > a. store this list of occupations in a mysql table and make > > occupation_id a foreign key in the User model? OR > > b. define this list as an array of constants in the User model? > > > In option b, the array definition will be long and take up space in my > > user.rb file. Can I put it somewhere else? > > > I am leaning toward option a because in the future I may want to allow > > each user to have more than one occupations. In that case, I will > > need to have another table to map the many-to-many relationship > > between users and occupations, right? > > > In the future, more occupations may be added to the list. I may also > > try the autocomplete plugin. > > Given the possible expansion to many-to-many, and the potential for > more - option A definitely makes more sense. Be aware that it's not > *always* the right way, though: I've got a legacy DB I'm working with > right now that contains DB tables for branches of the US armed forces > (silly, since they are unlikely to change) or even a table like this: > > id => name > 1 => First > 2 => Second > 3 => Third > > Apparently some Access programmers haven't heard of "helpers"... > > --Matt Jones
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