Rails - Apr 2008 - how do you model an article that has an author and readers w/ the same User model?

Hi,

I am stuck trying to figure out how to model this.

I have a user model and an article model.

It is easy enough to say the user has many articles and the article
has one user.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :articles
end

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
end


But how do I add the concept of an article having many readers?  The
readers would be using the same User model since a User can author
many articles but can also be reading many other articles.

Your help would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Frank

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Well I''m certain this isn''t a working answer, I thought
I''d post
anyways in hopes that maybe something I say here will jump start your
brain, and ultimately lead you to the solution.  None of this code was
tested.

#This one just uses habtm to make a join table for readers/reads

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :articles
  has_and_belongs_to_many :reads, :class_name => ''Article''
end

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_and_belongs_to_many :readers, :class_name => ''User''
end

-------------

# This one makes the join table explicitly and tries to use some fancy
has_many options.
# The :source-''s might be flipped, I''m not sure how those work
exactly.  Again this code
# isn''t tested, I just read through
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations/ClassMethods.html
# and came up with the best thing I could.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :articles
  has_many :readings, :through => :reads, :source => :user
end

# Read as in ''that was a good read(noun)'', NOT ''he
read(verb) well''.
Helps me to wrap my head around it better.
class Read < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :article
end

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :readers, :through => :reads, :source => :article
end

Again I can''t stress enough that I do not know at all if this will
work, so if your messing with it and you don''t possibly see how it
could work, it probably doesn''t.  Move on an find an answer from
someone more experienced (I have less than 6 months exp. in Rails/
Ruby, and use it much more as a hobby, and not a profession).

On Apr 4, 1:45 pm, "Frank Kim"
<railso...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am stuck trying to figure out how to model this.
>
> I have a user model and an article model.
>
> It is easy enough to say the user has many articles and the article
> has one user.
>
> class User < ActiveRecord::Base
>   has_many :articles
> end
>
> class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
>   belongs_to :user
> end
>
> But how do I add the concept of an article having many readers?  The
> readers would be using the same User model since a User can author
> many articles but can also be reading many other articles.
>
> Your help would be most appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Frank
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I''d suggest a join class called ''Subscription'' that
belongs_to :user
and :article.  With that you could also add some helpful attributes to
the join (e.g., ''can_reply'', or
''last_read_at'').  If you add that then

User
  has_many :articles
  has_many :subscriptions
 
has_many :articles_to_read, :class_name=>''Articles'',
:through=>subscriptions
end

Article
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :subscriptions
  has_many :readers, :class_name=>''User'',
:through=>:subscriptions
end

On Apr 4, 3:45 pm, "Frank Kim"
<railso...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am stuck trying to figure out how to model this.
>
> I have a user model and an article model.
>
> It is easy enough to say the user has many articles and the article
> has one user.
>
> class User < ActiveRecord::Base
>   has_many :articles
> end
>
> class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
>   belongs_to :user
> end
>
> But how do I add the concept of an article having many readers?  The
> readers would be using the same User model since a User can author
> many articles but can also be reading many other articles.
>
> Your help would be most appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Frank
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