Rails - Mar 2005 - "belongs_to" associated decided by another value in the model?

I have a model called "review".  It has a belongs_to
attribute called "art_form".  I want to setup another
belongs_to attribute called "art", but it needs to be
based on the value of "art_form".  In other words, the
class that the "art" belongs_to association points to
is decided by the value of "art_form".  Is this
possible?  If it is not do you have any suggestions on
how something similar could be done?

If this does not make any sense, I apologize.  If you
want to look at my crappy diagram, go here:
http://andrewc.mdns.org/print.pdf


Thank you,
Andrew M. Campbell

Hi,

Are the different "art" type definitions really that divergent? What
if you tried to develop a more abstracted "art" class that could maybe
meet the needs of all the different forms of art... And at some other
level, maybe like a view or a helper, handle the abstracted "art"
attributes differently based on the art_form.

So, for example, lets say your "art" class has an asset attribute. For
an "art" instance with "art_form" of portrait you''d
handle it like a
jpg, for a sculpture, perhaps a 3d model.

I dunno -- I just feel like the associations between models needs to
be hard, and have the data and the way you handle it flexible.

my 2 cents

-Caleb


On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:29:10 -0800 (PST), Andrew M. Campbell
<listdata-rphTv4pjVZMJGwgDXS7ZQA@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I have a model called "review".  It has a belongs_to
> attribute called "art_form".  I want to setup another
> belongs_to attribute called "art", but it needs to be
> based on the value of "art_form".  In other words, the
> class that the "art" belongs_to association points to
> is decided by the value of "art_form".  Is this
> possible?  If it is not do you have any suggestions on
> how something similar could be done?
> 
> If this does not make any sense, I apologize.  If you
> want to look at my crappy diagram, go here:
> http://andrewc.mdns.org/print.pdf
> 
> Thank you,
> Andrew M. Campbell
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Rails mailing list
> Rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
> http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails
>

--- Caleb Buxton <adbust-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I dunno -- I just feel like the associations between
> models needs to
> be hard, and have the data and the way you handle it
> flexible.
> 
> my 2 cents
I took your advice.  I''ve made it much further now.  I
appreciate you taking the time to give your 2 cents
worth.

Thanks,
Andrew M. Campbell