help: self referential & search

rubyonrails-talk
1

hi, i have a category and a category_type model, where category is selfreferential with parent_id. now, im not 100% sure whats the best way for later purposes in terms of search etc., but my initial intention was the store the category_types_id only in the root (where parent_id == 0), but like i said, how would i search through all children with a specific type of category_type? i mean i could read them into an array, but thats just wrong. should i store the category_type_id in each category?

i hope that was not to unclear... :wink:

thx tom

2

Tom Tom wrote:

hi, i have a category and a category_type model, where category is selfreferential with parent_id. now, im not 100% sure whats the best way for later purposes in terms of search etc., but my initial intention was the store the category_types_id only in the root (where parent_id == 0), but like i said, how would i search through all children with a specific type of category_type? i mean i could read them into an array, but thats just wrong. should i store the category_type_id in each category?

i hope that was not to unclear... :wink:

thx tom

You _could_ store it in another table, using has_and_belongs_to_many or has_many :through ...

3

thx, i went ahead and just marked the root - will see when i hot the forst roadblock;-)

tom

4

Tom Tom wrote:

hi, i have a category and a category_type model, where category is selfreferential with parent_id. now, im not 100% sure whats the best way for later purposes in terms of search etc.,

awesome_nested_set, of course. :slight_smile:

but my initial intention was the store the category_types_id only in the root (where parent_id == 0), but like i said,

No, you didn't say.

how would i search through all children with a specific type of category_type? i mean i could read them into an array, but thats just wrong. should i store the category_type_id in each category?

i hope that was not to unclear... :wink:

It was. What exactly are you trying to do?

thx tom

Best,

5

Hi Marnen, the idea was having a selreferential table via parent_id or lft/rgt to haev children etc.. now my point of doubts was whether to make "each"top-level record (aka a category) root r to move it into a different table and mark there the type of that category..eg

categories: babysitting yard electrics

category_types: service contractor job

hope that makes it clearer. tom