I would like to create a structure of Users
having many friends
, also of class User
:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :friends, class_name: "User"
end
I do not need any details of their relationship thus I do not use :through
with kind of class Friendship
. But now I cannot find any way how to create corresponding database (neither with migration file nor using rails g model User username:string ...
command). Any ideas?
Here are some resources which may be helpful:
I'll summarize the information found in those links:
Given that you're describing a self-referential many-to-many relationship, you will of course end up with a join table. Normally, the join table should be deliberately named in such a way that Rails will automatically figure out which models the table is joining, however the "self-referential" part makes this a tad awkward, but not difficult. You'll merely have to specify the name of the join table, as well as the joining columns.
You'll need to create this table using a migration that will probably look something like this:
class CreateFriendships < ActiveRecord::Migration
def self.up
create_table :friendships, id: false do |t|
t.integer :user_id
t.integer :friend_user_id
end
add_index(:friendships, [:user_id, :friend_user_id], :unique => true)
add_index(:friendships, [:friend_user_id, :user_id], :unique => true)
end
def self.down
remove_index(:friendships, [:friend_user_id, :user_id])
remove_index(:friendships, [:user_id, :friend_user_id])
drop_table :friendships
end
end
I'm not certain whether there is a shortcut way of creating this table, but bare minimum you can simply do rails g migration create_friendships
, and fill in the self.up
and self.down
methods.
And then finally in your user model, you simply add the name of the join table, like so:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :friends,
class_name: "User",
join_table: :friendships,
foreign_key: :user_id,
association_foreign_key: :friend_user_id
end
As you can see, while you do have a join table in the database, there is no related join model.
Please let me know whether this works for you.