Using External Databases that Don''t Have ID Columns

Will Clark
Mon, 30 Apr 2007 03:46:38 -0000

I have to connect to an external database which I don''t have control
of.
They were not setup with a Rails application in mind. I can extract
information easily enough, but creating associations between the models
is my problem. I am not certain how exactly to let Rails know what the
primary key column is.

I have two tables, properties and photos. I would like to create an
association like this:

Class Property
has_many :photos, :class_name => "Photo", :foreign_key =>
"propNum"
end

Class Photo
belongs_to :property, :class_name => "Property", :foreign_key =>
"propNum"
end

The properties table uses ''propNum'' instead of ID. The photos
table uses
photoNum instead of ID, and associates to the properties table using a
propNum column versus property_id.

I am not certain how exactly to specify what the primary column name is
so Rails can understand the association. Any help would be great.

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