STI with the type data depending on the association

Hello list,

I have the following entities: Product, Supplier. Manufacturer < Supplier and Vendor < Supplier.

Product has_many suppliers through products_suppliers

The thing is, the type of the supplier will depend on the product – this is the requirement. So, that’s why I though the type information should be in the products_suppliers entity.

What I would like to happen is, when a supplier is retrieved using the following command:

@suppliers = @product.suppliers.all

Somehow hook up AR and look into the type attribute of the products_suppliers association and for each record, instantiate the correct class (either Vendor or Manufacturer).

It’s STI, only that the type data is in another realm and is “variable” (depending on the product).

Is there a way to do that with the current STI implementation in Rails 2.2.2? If not, how could I hook up AR to make it happen? Or do you suggest something simpler?

Any suggestions appreciated.

Marcelo.

What I would like to happen is, when a supplier is retrieved using the following command:

@suppliers = @product.suppliers.all

Somehow hook up AR and look into the type attribute of the products_suppliers association and for each record, instantiate the correct class (either Vendor or Manufacturer).

So for any given row in product_suppliers, there's a supplier_id. Surely the row in the suppliers table with that id is either a Manufacturor or a Vendor ?

Fred

Hi Fred, thanks for the reply,

So for any given row in product_suppliers, there’s a supplier_id.

Surely the row in the suppliers table with that id is either a

Manufacturor or a Vendor ?

The relationship is like that:

class ProductsSupplier < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :product belongs_to :supplier end

class Supplier < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :product_suppliers has_many :products, through => :product_suppliers end

The first though I had was to use STI but somehow make AR instantiate the object based on a type attribute in a different model/table (in this case in the products_suppliers table) so as to make the type vary based on the relationship between product and supplier (as a a supplier might be a vendor for a product and/or maybe a manufacturer).

The thing is, I tried to monkeypatch AR to add this support to STI, but the thing is that I ended up by loosing too much time. I think that I will just keep a type field in products_suppliers and save a string value there (maybe coming from an enumeration) and define a method in the supplier model to get its type (is_vendor?, is_manufacturer)… KIS[S] :slight_smile:

But of course, any suggestions appreciated!

Thanks,

Marcelo.

The first though I had was to use STI **but** somehow make AR instantiate the object based on a type attribute in a different model/table (in this case in the products_suppliers table) so as to make the type vary based on the relationship between product and supplier (as a a supplier might be a vendor for a product and/or maybe a manufacturer).

The thing is, I tried to monkeypatch AR to add this support to STI, but the thing is that I ended up by loosing too much time. I think that I will just keep a type field in products_suppliers and save a string value there (maybe coming from an enumeration) and define a method in the supplier model to get its type (is_vendor?, is_manufacturer)... KIS[S] :slight_smile:

It wouldn't really be STI - it's a pretty basic that a given row in the database (ie object) has one type - feels like you;d be jumping through hoops to make AR believe you're doing STI. You might actually be able to sort of make this work if you did has_many :suppliers, :through => :product_suppliers, :select => 'suppliers.*, product_suppliers.type' but you might run into odd sideeffects.

Fred