Rails Model has_many with multiple foreign_keys
Relatively new to rails and trying to model a very simple family "tree" with a single Person model that has a name, gender, father_id and mother_id (2 parents). Below is basically what I want to do, but obviously I can't repeat the :children in a has_many (the first gets overwritten).
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
end
Is there a simple way to use has_many with 2 foreign keys, or maybe change the foreign key based on the object's gender? Or is there another/better way altogether?
Thanks!
Found a simple answer on IRC that seems to work (thanks to Radar):
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
has_many :children_of_father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
has_many :children_of_mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
def children
children_of_mother + children_of_father
end
end
To improve on Kenzie's answer, you can achieve an ActiveRecord Relation by defining Person#children
like:
def children
children_of_mother.merge(children_of_father)
end
see this answer for more details
Used named_scopes over the Person model do this:
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
def children
Person.with_parent(id)
end
named_scope :with_parent, lambda{ |pid|
{ :conditions=>["father_id = ? or mother_id=?", pid, pid]}
}
end