I'm not sure how to create this, I'd like to create a many-to-many polymorphic association.
I have a question model, which belongs to a company.
Now the question can has_many users, groups, or company. Depending on how you assign it.
I'd like to be able to assign the question to one / several users, or one / several groups, or the company it belongs to.
How do I go about setting this up?
In this case I would add a Assignment model which acts as an intersection between questions and the entities which are assigned to it.
Create the table
Lets run a generator to create the needed files:
rails g model assignment question:belongs_to assignee_id:integer assignee_type:string
Then let's open up the created migration file (db/migrations/...__create_assignments.rb):
class CreateAssignments < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :assignments do |t|
t.integer :assignee_id
t.string :assignee_type
t.belongs_to :question, index: true, foreign_key: true
t.index [:assignee_id, :assignee_type]
t.timestamps null: false
end
end
end
If you're paying attention here you can see that we add a foreign key for question_id but not assignee_id. That's because the database does not know which table assignee_id points to and cannot enforce referential integrity*. We also add a compound index for [:assignee_id, :assignee_type] as they always will be queried together.
Setting up the relationship
class Assignment < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :question
belongs_to :assignee, polymorphic: true
end
The polymorpic: true option tells ActiveRecord to look at the assignee_type column to decide which table to load assignee from.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments, as: :assignee
has_many :questions, through: :assignments
end
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments, as: :assignee
has_many :questions, through: :assignments
end
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments, as: :assignee
has_many :questions, through: :assignments
end
Unfortunately one of the caveats of polymorphic relationships is that you cannot eager load the polymorphic assignee relationship. Or declare a has_many :assignees, though: :assignments.
One workaround is:
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments, as: :assignee
has_many :questions, through: :assignments
def assignees
assignments.map(&:assignee)
end
end
But this can result in very inefficient SQL queries since each assignee will be loaded in a query!
Instead you can do something like this:
class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments
# creates a relationship for each assignee type
['Company', 'Group', 'User'].each do |type|
has_many "#{type.downcase}_assignees".to_sym,
through: :assignments,
source: :assignee,
source_type: type
end
def assignees
(company_assignees + group_assignees + user_assignees)
end
end
Which will only cause one query per assignee type which is a big improvement.
Related
I have two models: person.rb and relationship.rb
I need my :relationships table to reference two rows from the :people table as foreign keys.
Here are the migrations for both tables:
class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
def change
create_table :people do |t|
t.string :first_name
t.string :second_name
t.integer :age
t.string :gender
t.timestamps
end
end
end
class CreateRelationships < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
def change
create_table :relationships do |t|
t.references :person_a
t.references :person_b
t.string :status
t.timestamps
end
end
end
The idea is the :person_a and :person_b fields will both be individual records from the :people table referenced as foreign keys, while the :status field will just be a description of their relationship ("Married", "Friends", "Separated", etc.)
I'm trying to find out:
1) What is the additional code I have to write in the CreateRelationships migration above in order to set :person_a and :person_b up as foreign keys from the :people table?
2) What code do I need to write in the model files (person.rb and relationship.rb) for both tables below to define the relationship structure I'm talking about?
class Person < ApplicationRecord
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord
end
I've found one other question on here that deals with this issue, but the answers given were conflicting, some incomplete, and others working with older versions of Rails. None of them have worked for me.
I'm using Rails 5.1.4
You have defined you migration correctly just add the following in your model to define the relationship between the model.
class Person < ApplicationRecord::Base
has_many :relationships, dependent: :destroy
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord::Base
belongs_to :person_a, :class_name => 'Person'
belongs_to :person_b, :class_name => 'Person'
end
This allows you to access the Person that a Relationship belongs to like this:
#relationship.person_a #user assigned as the first person.
#relationship.person_b #user assigned as the second person.
Hope this works.
EDIT: Apologies for a rushed and wrong answer.
Initially, I thought that simple has_many/belongs_to association is possible and sufficient.
class Person < ApplicationRecord
has_many :relationships #dependent: :destroy
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :person_a, class_name: "Person"
belongs_to :person_b, class_name: "Person"
enum status: [:married, :friends, :separated]
end
As #engineersmnky pointed out, has_many association can't work here because there is no person_id column in relationships table. Since we can declare only one custom foreign key in has_many association, it's not possible to declare it here this way. belongs_to will work, but I don't think that's enough.
One way is to skip declaring has_many and stick to custom method for querying relationships:
class Person < ApplicationRecord
def relationships
Relationship.where("person_a_id = ? OR person_b_id = ?", id, id)
end
end
It will give you an ActiveRecord::Relation to work with, containing exactly the records you need. The drawbacks of this solution are numerous - depending on your needs, you will probably need more code for inserting data, starting with a setter method to assign relationships to people...
What could be a real solution, is to have a composite primary key in Relationship model - composed of :person_a_id and :person_b_id. ActiveRecord doesn't support composite primary keys, but this gem seems to fill the gap. Apparently it allows to declare such key and use it as a foreign key in a has_many association. The catch is that your person_a/person_b pairs would have to be unique across relationships table.
I had to do the same for a chat module, this is an example to how you can do it:
class Conversations < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :sender, foreign_key: :sender_id, class_name: 'User'
belongs_to :recipient, foreign_key: :recipient_id, class_name: 'User'
end
class User < ApplicationRecord
...
has_many :conversations
has_many :senders, through: :conversations, dependent: :destroy
has_many :recipients, through: :conversations, dependent: :destroy
...
end
More explanations at complex-has-many-through
Hope it helps,
You can do like this
In relationship model write
belongs_to : xyz, class_name: "Person", foreign_key: "person_a"
belongs_to : abc, class_name: "Person", foreign_key: "person_b"
In Person model write
has_many :relationships, dependent: :destroy
hope it will help
I am starting to learn more advanced associations, and polymorphic join table looks very interesting, but I've come to a bad limitation.
My models:
school_class.rb:
class SchoolClass < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :class_of_schools, as: :school_model, dependent: :destroy
has_many :basic_primary_schools, through: :class_of_schools
has_many :basic_shugenja_schools, through: :class_of_schools
has_many :basic_monk_schools, through: :class_of_schools
end
class_of_school.rb:
class ClassOfSchool < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :school_model, polymorphic: true
belongs_to :school_class
end
basic_primary_School.rb:
class BasicPrimarySchool < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :class_of_schools, as: :school_model, dependent: :destroy
has_many :school_classes, through: :class_of_schools
end
shugenja_school and monk_schools, has the same association as basic_primary_school.
And join model it self:
class CreateClassOfSchools < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :class_of_schools do |t|
t.integer :school_class_id
t.integer :school_model_id
t.string :school_model_type
t.timestamps null: false
end
end
end
It joins well on the school side, I can make school.class_schools, and I get the array of school_classes associated. But on the other side I can`t do the same. In fact when I check school_class.classes_of schools I get empty array.
I make associations in my seed file by function like this:
def join_schools_with_classes(school_object_name, school_classes_array)
school_object_name.all.each do |school|
school_classes = school_classes_array[school.name]
school_classes.each do |class_name|
school_class = SchoolClass.find_by(name: class_name)
school.class_of_schools.create( school_class_id: school_class.id)
end
end
end
My question:
How can I make this association works both ways? So I can call ClassSchool.first.class_of_schools returns, all objects associated to this object. And still be able to call BasicPrimarySchool.first.school_classes to get associated school_class objects.
Just remove as: :school_model in SchoolClass relation
has_many :class_of_schools, dependent: :destroy
EDIT
change the relation in SchoolClass to
has_many :basic_primary_schools, through: :class_of_schools, source: :school_model, source_type: "BasicPrimarySchool"
I am struggling with an issue in my data model. I do have the following models:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
...
has_many :claims #user-claims
has_many :claims, through: :rulings, as: :commissars
...
end
class Claim < ActiveRecord::Base
...
belongs_to :user
has_many :users, through: :rulings, as: :commissars
...
end
class Ruling < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :claim
end
Error:
undefined method `commissars' for #<Claim:0xc5ac090>
Model Explanation:
User can write claims (A claim belongs to one user), and users could do the role of commissars to do the ruling of the claim (max numbers of commissars = 3 per claim).
Is there any way to fix this or improve the relationship?
This domain model requires som pretty complex relations so there is no shame in not getting it on the first try.
Lets start with user and claims:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :claims, foreign_key: 'claimant_id',
inverse_of: :claimant
end
class Claim < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :claimant, class_name: 'User',
inverse_of: :claims
end
This is a pretty basic one to many relation with a twist. Since User will have a bunch of relations to Claim we call the relation something other than the default user so that the nature of the relation is defined.
The class_name: 'User' option tells ActiveRecord to load the class User and use it to figure out what table to query and also what class to return the results as. Its needed whenever the class name cannot be directly derived from the name of the association. The option should be a string and not a constant due to the way Rails lazily resolves class dependencies.
Now lets add the commissar role. We will use ruling as the join table:
class Ruling < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :claim
belongs_to :commissioner, class_name: 'User'
end
Notice that here we have a relation to User that we call commissioner for clarity. Now we add the relations to Claim:
class Claim < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :claimant, class_name: 'User',
inverse_of: :claims
has_many :rulings
has_many :commissioners, through: :rulings
end
Then we need to setup the relations on the User side:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :claims, foreign_key: 'claimant_id',
inverse_of: :claimant
# rulings as claimant
has_many :rulings, through: :claims
has_many :rulings_as_commissioner, class_name: 'Ruling',
foreign_key: 'commissioner_id'
has_many :claims_as_commissioner, through: :rulings_as_commissioner,
source: :claim
end
Note the source: :claim option where we tell ActiveRecord which party we want from the join table.
Of course for this to work we need to setup the columns and the foreign keys properly. These migrations are to create the tables from scratch but you can easily rewrite them to alter your existing tables:
class CreateClaims < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :claims do |t|
t.belongs_to :claimant, index: true, foreign_key: false
t.timestamps null: false
end
# we need to setup the fkey ourself since it is not conventional
add_foreign_key :claims, :users, column: :claimant_id
end
end
class CreateRulings < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :rulings do |t|
t.belongs_to :claim, index: true, foreign_key: true
t.belongs_to :commissioner, index: true, foreign_key: false
t.timestamps null: false
end
add_foreign_key :rulings, :users, column: :commissioner_id
add_index :rulings, [:claim_id, :commissioner_id], unique: true
end
end
max numbers of commissars = 3 per claim
This is not really part of the associations rather you would enforce this rule by adding a validation or an association callback.
class Ruling < ActiveRecord::Base
# ...
validate :only_three_rulings_per_claim
private
def only_three_rulings_per_claim
if claim.rulings.size >= 3
errors.add(:claim, "already has the max number of commissars")
end
end
end
See:
Rails Guides: Active Record Migrations
Rails Guides: the has_many though: relations
First, I would suggest you go back and read the Guide carefully as I believe you have fundamentally misunderstood a number of things. The as: option, for instance, does not indicate role but, rather, the presence of a polymorphic join. Also, you can't declare has_many :claims twice on the same model. Anyway, go give it another read.
But, to your question - a functional although somewhat inelegant approach might look like:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
...
has_many :claims
has_many :claim_commissars, foreign_key: "commissar_id"
has_many :commissar_claims, through: :claim_commissars, class_name: "Claim"
# ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
# this bit may be wrong
...
end
class Claim < ActiveRecord::Base
...
belongs_to :user
has_one :ruling
has_many :claim_commissars
has_many :commissars, through: :claim_commissars
...
end
class ClaimCommissar < ActiveRecord::Base
...
belongs_to :claim
belongs_to :commissar, class_name: "User"
...
end
class Ruling < ActiveRecord::Base
...
belongs_to :claim
belongs_to :commissar, class_name: "User"
...
end
You would need to enforce your 'max 3 commissars` in the code.
This is not tested and you will likely need to fiddle with it to get it to go. But, hopefully, it sets you in a better direction.
Good luck!
I'm actually trying to create a has_many through association. Let me first explain a bit about how things are supposed to work.
I have a users, groups and members tables. The rules are as follow :
A user can create a group (depending on it's role) (groups table has a user_id)
A user can be member of one or many groups (members table contain user_id and group_id)
Here is my current relationship classes :
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# Associations
has_many :groups # As user, I create many groups
has_many :members
has_many :groups, through: :members # But I can also belongs to many groups
end
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
# Associations
belongs_to :user
has_many :members
has_many :users, through: :members
end
class Member < ActiveRecord::Base
# Associations
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :group
end
My problem is about the group relationship. You see a user can create groups, which means :
has_many :groups
but a user can also be member of groups :
has_many :groups, through: :members
Because of this new relationship, 75% of my specs are now broken. Also, I notice that if I logged in with a user associated to a group, I can see actually groups list. But when I'm trying to logged in as group owner (the one who created the group), I can not see the groups created by that user).
Idea?
You are not looking for an has_many through relationship here
Try that :
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# Associations
has_and_belongs_to_many :groups
has_many :created_groups, class_name: 'Group', foreign_key: 'creator_id'
end
class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
# Associations
belongs_to :creator, class_name: 'User'
has_and_belongs_to_many :members, class_name: 'User'
end
This is a solution if you don't need the member class to do any special treatment.
You should have a migration that looks like that:
class CreateGroupsUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :groups_users, id: false do |t|
t.references :group
t.references :user
end
add_index :groups_users, [:group_id, :user_id]
add_index :groups_users, :user_id
end
end
And you have to make sure that your groups table have a creator_id !
In RoR3,
I have Users and Skills and each skill is created by a user. I wanted to record that, so I created a one to many relationship.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :skills
end
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
end
However, each user also has many skills in the sense that, user "Bob" created skill "Kung Fu", user "Charlie" created skill "Karate" and user "Bob" both created and is able to do both "Kung Fu" and "Karate"
How should I represent this with ActiveRecord? Should I just create a new table "user_skills" which has_many :skills? and belong_to :user?
There are two different associations here. The first is a one-to-many association. An user can be the creator of any number of skills. The second one is a many-to-many association, an user can have many skills and a skill can have many users.
The first one is a simple belongs_to <-> has_many declaration. For the second one, you either need a has_and_belongs_to_many declaration in both models, and a related join table, or a dedicated join model, and a has_many :through declaration. Let's try the first one:
Method 1: HABTM
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :created_skills, :class_name => 'Skill', :inverse_of => :creator
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
end
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :creator, :class_name => 'User', :inverse_of => :created_skills
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
end
This requires a join table called "skills_users" that has columns named user_id and skill_id
Method 2: Has many through (Join model)
The second one is similar, but adds a model that acts as the middleman. This has an added benefit that you can include additional columns in the join model, like for example a skill level.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :created_skills, :class_name => 'Skill', :inverse_of => :creator
has_many :user_skills
has_many :skills, :through => :user_skills
end
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :creator, :class_name => 'User', :inverse_of => :created_skills
has_many :user_skills
has_many :users, :through => :user_skills
end
class UserSkill < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :skill
end
Having those two models
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
end
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
end
You would have to create an extra migration (without the model)
rails generate migration CreateSkillsUsersJoin
which will give you
class CreateSkillsUsersJoin < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :skills_users, id => false do |t|
t.references "user"
t.references "skill"
end
add_index :skills_users,["user_id","skill_id"]
end
def self.down
drop_table :skills_users
end
end
The methods self.up and self.down you will have yo add them
You'd be well served using a gem like acts_as_taggable_on which you'd be able to simply setup and use in your User model, something like:
acts_as_taggable_on :skills
Honestly, they've figured all this stuff out, as it's not as simple as what you're trying to do, OR I should rephrase that and say, what you are trying to do is overtly 'complex' and this gem allows you to just keep on, keeping on after it's set up.
Read the Readme.