Rails: belongs_to vs has_one

ruby-on-rails model associations has-many belongs-to
Matt Briggs picture Matt Briggs · May 22, 2009 · Viewed 19k times · Source

A bit of a newbie question on rails associations.

I have a Bug model, and a Status model. Status is basically just a key/value pair table. Out of the choices available, I would say Bug has_one Status makes the most sense. However, according to this

Content belongs_to ContentTemplate. Go back and look at how I described the problem, and you'll see that it works. With belongs_to, the table accepts responsibility for the foreign key. So Content has a content_template_id. And ContentTemplate doesn't need anything. I can point to it at will. Done.

Bug belongs_to Status would be more appropriate (since Bug should take the foreign key). Semantically, his example makes sense, but mine makes none. Is this just a quirk of rails where in this situation it looks odd, or am I not understanding something/doing it wrong?

Answer

Chuck picture Chuck · May 22, 2009

Yes, I think you've just found a slightly odd-looking scenario in Rails. I suppose it might be useful to view "status" as a sort of category to which the bug belongs — in that light, it makes sense.

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