CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails-4
dan
dan

Reputation: 1080

Naming conventions where models have more than one relationship

I have three models - users, books and contribution.

Each @book will have a title and an author (who owns that instance).

Optionally, each @book can have a number of contributors.

Authors and contributors come from the same class User.

What's the best approach to writing the model relationships? My instinct is

User  :name
Book  :title :user_id
Contribution  :book_id :user_id

users.rb -

has_many :books
has_many :books, through :contribution

books.rb - 

belongs_to :user
has_many :users, through :contribution

contributions.rb -

belongs_to :user
belongs_to :book

...but this seems like asking for trouble. Is there a best practice approach to handling models with more than one relationship?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 46

Answers (2)

Tony Tambe
Tony Tambe

Reputation: 573

I don't know what the full extent of the needs are of your site, but it can be even simpler and just make contributor an attribute of the books model. Books would just have an array of contributors the same way it has a name and an author.

If you have more complex things in mind for the contributor, then maybe making it it's own model is the way to go.

Upvotes: 1

dan
dan

Reputation: 1080

What worked for me was the following -

users.rb -

has_many :books
has_many :contributions

books.rb - 

belongs_to :user
has_many :contributions

contributions.rb -

belongs_to :user
belongs_to :book
  • lesson for me: don't overthink stuff

Upvotes: 0

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