Hello out there,
let's assume, I've got an article model. An article always has an author and refers to it. But I've got several types of authors which all have theier own models. So a simple foreign key rather belongs_to will not help me. So, I could save the author_id and a kind of authot_type to manually create the association. Is there a more comfortable way in rails?
Thank you very much! 
ms
Thank you for your answer. I read this article before, but I can't map this technique to my problem. Maybe you can help me with this?
Thank you!
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :author, :polymorphic => true end
And then to assign an author:
article = Article.new article.author = some_author article.save
BTW, your table should have an "author_id" column (usually an integer) and an "author_type" column (usually a varchar).
> class Article < ActiveRecord::Base > belongs_to :author, :polymorphic => true > end
> And then to assign an author:
> article = Article.new > article.author = some_author > article.save
But I've got no no author model, since author is nothing concrete in my data model. Doesn't this matter?
No, the "author" can be any of you models that descend from ActiveRecord::Base.
Hey, fantastic thing and so easy, thank you!
Polymorphic associations
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Why not?
Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/ Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/
Um dude you're talking single table inheritance not polymorphic
associations which is what he's after
Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/ Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/