Which relationship is good to use STI or Polymorphism? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have read about them but still not clear to me which one I suppose to use and how.
I have User model, Message model and Place model
Message model:
class Message < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
end
Messages Table:
create_table "messages", force: true do |t|
t.string "title"
t.integer "user_id"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
User model:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :messages
end
Users Table:
create_table "users", force: true do |t|
t.string "email"
t.string "password_digest"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
t.string "username"
end
Now, what I want to do is:
"USER" says "MESSAGES" from "PLACES"
eg. "AHMED" says "HELLO" from "EARTH"
For me both Models (Message and Place) have same data (data type) and same behaviours. So places table should be:
create_table "places", force: true do |t|
t.string "name"
t.integer "user_id"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
Now may be I'm confused or making big deal than it should be.
What kind of relation should Message and Place have? should it be STI or Polymorphism?
How should I decide?
I'd appreciate the thinking process of how and why I decide specific association.

Answer 1

This example, despite Messages and Places having the same data, doesn't seems a STI/Polymorphism scenario and they should have two different tables.
This could work as a solution:
create_table "users" do |t|
t.string "username"
end
create_table "messages" do |t|
t.string "text"
t.integer "user_id"
t.integer "place_id"
end
create_table "places" do |t|
t.string "name"
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :messages
has_many :places, through: :messages
end
class Place < ActiveRecord::Base
end
class Message < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :place
def to_s
"#{user.username} says #{title} from #{place.name}"
end
end
ahmed = User.new(username: "AHMED")
earth = Place.new(name: "EARTH")
message = Message.new(text: "HELLO", user: ahmed, place: earth)
puts message
# => "AHMED says HELLO from EARTH"