Abstract Class/Model

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all -

I'd like to create an abstract model that other certain models can inherit from. I know that I'll need to use the `abstract_model?` to return `true` to set that up.

The reason I'd like to use an abstract model is I'd like to be able to force a sub-class to include a certain attribute if it doesn't already include it (in the database). Such as 'Title'.

The reason for needing this is that different models I have will be used as news categories, so I need a common attribute that all have the same name so that in my views I can just call the one accessor with the same name.

I hope that makes sense.

Is there anyway I can do this?

Regards

David Winter

2

The best option is to just add a title column to every table. But if you really want to use a common base class....

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base   self.abstract_class = true end