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RubyMax
RubyMax

Reputation: 341

Rails: How to store extra attributes using single table inheritance?

I'm building an application in Ruby on Rails, Rails 4.

Let's say I have a table Users and I want to specify two types of users User_1 and User_2

User_1 will use all of the columns from the parent table Users, but User_2 will use all of the columns from the User table like User_1 but need two extra columns to hold details. The question is where and how are these extra details stored?

Are they columns added to the parent table Users? or are the extra attributes coded in the Model or Controller? I'm looking to store two pieces of integer data, which they will input in their profile.

Thanks for taking a look! :)

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1287

Answers (3)

Paulo Fidalgo
Paulo Fidalgo

Reputation: 22296

It seams you're in need for the mentioned Single Table Inheritance. But before you proceed I really recommend you to check more information about them. Check this blog post for a more theoretical explanation and how and when to use it.

For a more complete example check this example.

If you still have a pro acount on railscast, there's one about it.

Upvotes: 0

fivedigit
fivedigit

Reputation: 18682

Single Table Inheritance basically means that all subclasses of User are sharing a single database table, in your case users. Since you need to store the data in the database, you need to add additional columns to your users table.

You can find more information on STI in the Rails documentation.

Upvotes: 1

mdemolin
mdemolin

Reputation: 2534

Extra attributes are all stored in the parent table User. Behind STI scene, there is just one table in your database with an attribute type telling rails which model should be used. If you want an inherited model to have some columns, it must be set in your parent model, ie. in your database.

Extra attributes are stored in the database, and your model is rails way to help you accessing it.

Upvotes: 0

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