Rails Polymorphic Association with multiple associations on the same model

Question

My question is essentially the same as this one: Polymorphic Association with multiple associations on the same model

However, the proposed/accepted solution does not work, as illustrated by a commenter later.

I have a Photo class that is used all over my app. A post can have a single photo. However, I want to re-use the polymorphic relationship to add a secondary photo.

Before:

class Photo 
   belongs_to :attachable, :polymorphic => true
end

class Post
   has_one :photo, :as => :attachable, :dependent => :destroy
end

Desired:

class Photo 
   belongs_to :attachable, :polymorphic => true
end

class Post
   has_one :photo,           :as => :attachable, :dependent => :destroy
   has_one :secondary_photo, :as => :attachable, :dependent => :destroy
end

However, this fails as it cannot find the class "SecondaryPhoto". Based on what I could tell from that other thread, I'd want to do:

   has_one :secondary_photo, :as => :attachable, :class_name => "Photo", :dependent => :destroy

Except calling Post#secondary_photo simply returns the same photo that is attached via the Photo association, e.g. Post#photo === Post#secondary_photo. Looking at the SQL, it does WHERE type = "Photo" instead of, say, "SecondaryPhoto" as I'd like...

Thoughts? Thanks!

Answer 1

I have done that in my project.

The trick is that photos need a column that will be used in has_one condition to distinguish between primary and secondary photos. Pay attention to what happens in :conditions here.

has_one :photo, :as => 'attachable', 
        :conditions => {:photo_type => 'primary_photo'}, :dependent => :destroy

has_one :secondary_photo, :class_name => 'Photo', :as => 'attachable',
        :conditions => {:photo_type => 'secondary_photo'}, :dependent => :destroy

The beauty of this approach is that when you create photos using @post.build_photo, the photo_type will automatically be pre-populated with corresponding type, like 'primary_photo'. ActiveRecord is smart enough to do that.