Is there such a thing? I am thinking of an application that has something like this: 1. person has many things - there is a ''persons'' table 2. the things he has are stored in a table that is something like this person_id, thing_table_name, thing_id For example, it may map to person1, books, 23 #Person 1 owns book 23 person1, books, 25 #Person 1 owns book 25 person1, chair, 23 #Person 1 owns chair 23 person1, books, 30 person2, books, 19 person2, books, 31 #Person 2 owns book 31 ... and so on.. 3. A number of tables for different ''things''... books - table for books chairs - table for chairs and so on... Ideally I want to have something which means "person has_and_belongs_to_many_different things" I guess it could be implemented by manually looking at the 2nd table to find the foreign key and table that it refers to and then do a find from the specific table for the specific ID. But, I''m trying to find a better "Railsy" way. Cheers Mohit.
Mohit Sindhwani wrote:> Is there such a thing? I am thinking of an application that has > something like this: > > 1. person has many things - there is a ''persons'' table > > 2. the things he has are stored in a table that is something like this > person_id, thing_table_name, thing_id > For example, it may map to > person1, books, 23 #Person 1 owns book 23 > person1, books, 25 #Person 1 owns book 25 > person1, chair, 23 #Person 1 owns chair 23 > person1, books, 30 > person2, books, 19 > person2, books, 31 #Person 2 owns book 31 > ... and so on.. > > 3. A number of tables for different ''things''... > books - table for books > chairs - table for chairs > and so on... > > Ideally I want to have something which means "person > has_and_belongs_to_many_different things" > I guess it could be implemented by manually looking at the 2nd table > to find the foreign key and table that it refers to and then do a find > from the specific table for the specific ID. But, I''m trying to find a > better "Railsy" way. > > Cheers > Mohit.Answering my own question here.. but is this similar to Recipe #23 in the Rails Recipes book? Is this a case of "Polymorphic Associations?has_many :whatevers"? Cheers Mohit.