Active Record two belongs_to calls to the same model
- by ethyreal
In linking a sports event to two teams, at first this seemed to make since:
events
- id:integer
- integer:home_team_id
- integer:away_team_id
teams
- integer:id
- string:name
However I am troubled by how I would link that up in the active record model:
class Event
belongs_to :home_team, :class_name => 'Team', :foreign_key => "home_team_id"
belongs_to :away_team, :class_name => 'Team', :foreign_key => "away_team_id"
end
Is that the best solution?
In an answer to a similar question I was pointed to single table inheritance, and then later found polymorphic associations. Neither of which seemed to fit this association. Perhaps I am looking at this wrong, but I see no need to subclass a team into home and away teams since the distinction is only in where the game is played.
I thought also about a has_many through association but that seems two much as I will only ever need two teams, but those two teams don't belong to any one event.
event_teams
- integer:event_id
- integer:team_id
- boolean:is_home
Is there a cleaner more semantic way for making these associations in active record?
Thanks
