I found a way to make my original schema work. Single table inheritance. Define the associations on the subclasses, and you can use a different foreign key in each subclass. Works like a charm.
I'm still debating with myself about a more sophisticated schema like the ones suggested though. On Apr 9, 1:59 pm, Joe <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Michael- > > Thanks so much for the reply. Those links were very helpful, and I > especially enjoyed the one about gay marriage. > > So it seems like it would be very difficult to do what I originally > wanted (create a new kind of association that works in a new way), and > it would require an understanding of rails internals and a lot of > work. The upshot is that if I think I need to change rails, I'm > probably wrong, and I just need to change my schema to conform to best > practices. > > So I will take the advice, and alter the schema to fit with rails > better. And following tips I got from those articles, it will have > more flexibility too, though I think it will also have much more > complexity than I had originally expected. I'm still nailing down my > perfect schema, but I think I'm getting close. > > Thanks for your advice > Joe > > On Apr 8, 3:54 am, Michael Pavling <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > On 8 April 2010 08:07, Joe <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > My schema looks like > > > > create_table "people", :force => true do |t| > > > t.string "name" > > > t.string "sex" > > > t.integer "father_id" > > > t.integer "mother_id" > > > end > > > PS Here's a couple of links to DB designs for family > > relationships:http://www.familyhistorysa.info/dbDesign.htmlhttp://www.databaseanswe... > > > And here's one for modelling marriages (not strictly what you're > > talking about, but the principle of husband/wife not being as simple > > as first thought is similar to your issue with > > mother/father):http://qntm.org/gay -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. 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.
