I am working on a horse racing application and I'm trying to utilize STI to model a horse's connections. A horse's connections is comprised of his owner, trainer and jockey. Over time, connections can change for a variety of reasons:
The horse is sold to another owner
The owner switches trainers or jockey
The horse is claimed by a new owner
As it stands now, I have model this with the following tables:
horses
connections (join table)
stakeholders (stakeholder has three sub classes: jockey, trainer & owner)
Here are my clases and associations:
class Horse < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :connection
has_one :owner_stakeholder, :through => :connection
has_one :jockey_stakeholder, :through => :connection
has_one :trainer_stakeholder, :through => :connection
end
class Connection < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :horse
belongs_to :owner_stakeholder
belongs_to :jockey_stakeholder
belongs_to :trainer_stakeholder
end
class Stakeholder < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :connections
has_many :horses, :through => :connections
end
class Owner < Stakeholder
# Owner specific code goes here.
end
class Jockey < Stakeholder
# Jockey specific code goes here.
end
class Trainer < Stakeholder
# Trainer specific code goes here.
end
One the database end, I have inserted a Type column in the connections table.
Have I modeled this correctly. Is there a better/more elegant approach. Thanks in advance for you feedback.
Jim
