CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyactiverecord
NolanDC
NolanDC

Reputation: 1041

Ruby on rails model with multiple parents

In my Rails application, I have two models, Articles and Projects, which are both associated with a user. I want to add comments to each of these models. What's the best way to structure this?

Here's my current setup:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :article
  belongs_to :project
end

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :comments
end

class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :comments
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :articles
  has_many :projects
  has_many :comments, :through => :articles
  has_many :comments, :through => :projects
end

Is this the right way to handle the structure? If so, how do I manage the CommentsController to have an article_id if it was created through an Article, and a project_id if it was created through a Project? Are there special routes I should set up?

One final comment: Comments don't always have to have a user. Since this if for my website, I want anonymous viewers to be able to leave comments. Is this a trivial task to handle?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1783

Answers (3)

Simone Carletti
Simone Carletti

Reputation: 176552

Make Comment a polymorphic model. Then create a polymorphic association.

Here's an example of polymorphic relationship from the Rails wiki and here's a Railscast from the screencast-men Ryan Bates.

Upvotes: 5

edthix
edthix

Reputation: 1752

You can check out - acts_as_commentable plugin http://github.com/jackdempsey/acts_as_commentable/tree/master

Or you can proceed with polymorphic relation

Upvotes: 1

Sophie Alpert
Sophie Alpert

Reputation: 143194

You could have ArticleComments and ProjectComments with similar structure but stored separately, then create a method that returns both types of comments.

Upvotes: -1

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