habtm additional column

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi!

In one of my current projects, I have an habtm relationship between two models. To access the table

via console, I created the model for the join table. so for example, I have

class Foo

has_and_belongs_to_many :bars, :join_table => ‘foo_bars’

I created a FooBar class so I can actually access the records via AR. My question is this, is it fine to

add another column to this table?

2

If you are going to add another column to the FooBar table then you might as well change the associations of models Foo and Bar to has_many :foo_bar and then put belongs_to :foo belongs_to :bar in your model FooBar. The point of the has_and_belongs_to_many is to setup a join table for association that you don’t plan on accessing through a model or need additional fields for.

B.

3

Using HABTM prevents you from using the additional column, but you can get the desired effect by replacing HABTM on each side with something like:

class Foo

has_many :foo_bars, :join_table => “foo_bars”

has_many :bars, :through => :foo_bars

end

4

Using HABTM prevents you from using the additional column, but you can get the desired effect by replacing HABTM on each side with something like:

I’ve ended up adding a new column to foo_bars which I can access fine without changing

the current relationships. The problem is with updating a FooBar record which has no ID column

which rails needs. Since I don’t need an ID column on foo_bars, i just update the record with

an sql statement.

Cheers!