attempting to use fixtures with STI and references

Hello.

I'm attempting to use STI for a class that contains a reference_id field. However, the class_name of the reference isn't known in the base class because each subclass uses a different reference class_name.

Basically, it looks like this:

class Note < ActiveRecord::Base end

class ProjectNote < Note   has_one :reference, :class_name => 'Project' end

class ClientNote < Note   has_one :reference, :class_name => 'Client' end

Then in test/fixtures/notes.yml, I have: client_note:   reference: my_client

project_note:   reference: my_project

This works fine (and I define helpers for the class to access their reference), but when it comes to fixtures, I'm stumped. When rails tries to load the fixtures, I get an error about an 'unknown column "reference" in "field list" for the "notes" table, and according to the SQL it's trying to insert the name of the Client fixture into the "reference" field, instead of using the id in the "reference_id" field.

I'm not 100% positive what I'm attempting to do is even possible, but I would appreciate whatever help / advice anyone can offer.

Thanks, Darrik Mazey DMT Programming, LLC.