CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyactiverecorddatabase-design
jakenberg
jakenberg

Reputation: 2113

Special Case Models in ActiveRecord Schema (Rails)

I have a project that is built with a tagging model to reference three different models: artist, article, event. I have associated each model to the tagging model via has_many through:. I have two problems; both related to each other:

  1. I have 5 "default" methods that I wish to be able to call restfully from the tagging controller/model: popular, upcoming, events, articles, and artists. Each method is designed to do exactly as it's name implies. The issue lies within these methods being a query by nature. How can I maintain a consistent schema where 5 of the many taggings models I have require a special attribute (let's call it content) that should subsequently call the appropriate method?

  2. When calling any one of the taggings models, it will return (in it's content attribute) an array of the 3 models specified earlier. Other than adding a method within each model that contains a localized description of the model and then calling upon that type method to match another hardcoded string elsewhere, is there any alternative? I don't like how the implementation I just described requires me to hardcode values. Eek.

I'm very new to Ruby on Rails, so I apologize if this is an obvious solution. However I have spent a week looking into ways to solve this compound problem that I'm trying to solve. Any input is appreciated!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 81

Answers (1)

dre-hh
dre-hh

Reputation: 8044

As far as i unterstand you need a polymorphic association. Because tags can be applied on different models, the clue is to treat all these models in polymorphic manner by marking them as :taggable on the association to tags.

I would just use the popular acts_as_taggable_on gem for it.

Upvotes: 1

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