has_many_and_belongs_to_many

I read this:    http://jrhicks.net/Projects/rails/has_many_and_belongs_to_many.pdf

It is from 2005, so some of it has old screenshots (and it looks like Windows).

Do I really create that third table on my own? Rails doesn't automagically create it?

I have students and parents. Students can have more than one parent and a parent can have more than one student. So I have to create a students_parents table to track the connections? How will rails know it is that instead of a parents_students table?

Thanks, --Colin

Actually, rails would want a parents_students table, it puts the model names in sort order.

And yes, you need to create the table, but nowadays you can use a migration instead of hand coded sql

   CreateParentsStudents < ActiveRecord::Migration

    def self.up         create_table :parents_students, :id => false do | t |             t.column :parent_id, :integer             t.column :student_id, :integer         end    end

   def self.down         drop_table :parents_students    end end

Okay, thanks. I did that. Perfect.

--Colin