convention for multiple id reference

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

Here's the thing : I have a table with languages (name, label, id).

languages id name label

I'd like another table people with primary_language and secondary_langage that should refer to a language_id.

people id firstname familyname primary_language -> language_id secondary_language -> language_id

Because I got 2 references, I don't know how I can do. I think I have to explicitly say in the Person and Language model that primary_language and secondary_language is a language_id. How can I do ?

Thanks

2

Here's how the table would look:

people id firstname familyname primary_language -> primary_language_id secondary_language -> secondary_language_id

And the class:

class Person     belongs_to :primary_language, :class_name => 'Language'     belongs_to :secondary_language, :class_name => 'Language' end

3

For assigning the language id you need to assign the language_id before saving the record. this should be

record.primary_language_id = language.id record.secondary_language_id = language.id record.save!

In your person model you can say,   belongs_to :primary_language, :class_name => "Language", :foreign_key => "primary_language_id" for the relation ship. So in this case People.primary_language will be the language record. As for the Rails coding use the column name as "primary_language_id" instead of "primary_language".