Rails - May 2006 - Having two columns in a model point to another table

Hey, I''m kind of new to Rails, and would appreciate it if someone could
point me in the right direction on this.

I have a "users" table in my application, and I wanted to set up a
"debts"
table, to store debts between users.

My current table structure for "debts" is

CREATE TABLE debts (
 id int not null auto_increment,
 owed_user_id int not null,    # User that is owed the money
 owee_user_id int not null,    # User that owes money to the owed_user
 reason text not null,             # Reason for debt
 amount decimal(10,2) not null,
 primary key(id)
);

In this case, both owed_user_id and owee_user_id point to a different user
in the Users table. How can I represent this in my model class for Users and
Debts using Rails associations? None of the associations seemed to fit for
me. Maybe I''m thinking of the table structure in the wrong manner, and
there''s a better way to do that given the constraints of Rails
associations.

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!


David Balatero
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David Balatero wrote:
> Hey, I''m kind of new to Rails, and would appreciate it if someone
could
> point me in the right direction on this.
> 
> I have a "users" table in my application, and I wanted to set up
a
> "debts"
> table, to store debts between users.
> 
> My current table structure for "debts" is
> 
> CREATE TABLE debts (
>  id int not null auto_increment,
>  owed_user_id int not null,    # User that is owed the money
>  owee_user_id int not null,    # User that owes money to the owed_user
>  reason text not null,             # Reason for debt
>  amount decimal(10,2) not null,
>  primary key(id)
> );
This is a job for a self-referential has_many :through association.  You 
can read an example of that here:

http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/articles/2006/04/21/self-referential-through

You''d set up your users where I have nodes in my example, and debts 
would be edges. Creditors and debtors would go in the place of sources 
and sinks.  Have fun!

--
Josh Susser
http://blog.hasmanythrough.com

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