Rails - May 2009 - ID not primary key with not unique values

Sorry for the re-post. Nobody has even answered "no, can''t
do".

I have an ID column in a legacy table of type STRING and could contain
not unique values. Is there a way of disabling the convention of ID
being the primary key? How can I assign the values I need to the ID
column without using SQL, which I already know would work?

ruby: 1.8.6
rails: 2.3.2
Database: Oracle 10g

Thanks.

Pepe

I believe the primary_key directive will tell AR what field to use as the actual
PK.  Something like:

  class MyClass < AR::Base
    primary_key :actual_pk_field_name
  end

Hopefully AR would then then ignore the id field.

-----Original Message-----
From: rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org
[mailto:rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of pepe
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 9:11 AM
To: Ruby on Rails: Talk
Subject: [Rails] ID not primary key with not unique values


Sorry for the re-post. Nobody has even answered "no, can''t
do".

I have an ID column in a legacy table of type STRING and could contain not
unique values. Is there a way of disabling the convention of ID being the
primary key? How can I assign the values I need to the ID column without using
SQL, which I already know would work?

ruby: 1.8.6
rails: 2.3.2
Database: Oracle 10g

Thanks.

Pepe


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On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 6:11 PM, pepe
<Pepe-gUAqH5+0sKL6V6G2DxALlg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>
> Sorry for the re-post. Nobody has even answered "no, can''t
do".
>
> I have an ID column in a legacy table of type STRING and could contain
> not unique values. Is there a way of disabling the convention of ID
> being the primary key? How can I assign the values I need to the ID
> column without using SQL, which I already know would work?
>
> ruby: 1.8.6
> rails: 2.3.2
> Database: Oracle 10g
>
> Thanks.
>
> Pepe

Yup, can do :-)
See: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#M002232

Technically a primary key is not a primary key if it can contain
duplicate (not unique) values

Andrew Timberlake
http://ramblingsonrails.com

http://MyMvelope.com - The SIMPLE way to manage your savings