Question on Data Modeling

rubyonrails-talk
1

Suppose I want to let a user choose different languages when filling out a form, like English, Spanish, and Other, where Other is user-specified.

What is the best way to model this in a RoR database? Is it better to have a string or an integer that is converted with case-statements to mean 1=English, 2=Spanish, 3=Other…?

Thanks,

Rodrigo

2

If the requirement is as limited as you say than either way is fine. I would just stick with the string in this case because maintaining which number equals what language is a maintenance hassle unless you have that stored in a database.

B.