Valentino Lun wrote: > Dear all > > Refer to http://guides.rails.info/association_basics.html > > Why :physician and :patient some with (s), and some not...? It actually > refer to the class name or table name? ** really confuse >_<. Can > someone explain it? Is it a convention of rail? Thank you.
My guess is that English is not your native language. This might be why you are confused by the Rails conventions, which follows English singular/plural conventions. Here's the scoop. I hope you can follow along: First let's look at a Rails model object. The model class is like a prototype (or template) representing a single row in a database table. This is why the model class name is singular. Example: class Physician < ActiveRecord::Base ... end The database table that stores each physician contains a collection of physicians, which is why the table name is plural. Rails associations can represent either one or many model objects. Associations described as either has_one or belongs_to represent one object and therefore use the singular form: Examples: class Appointment < ActiveRecord::Base has_one :physician # This is one Physician object (singular) end class Appointment < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :physician # This is one Physician object (singular) end Note: Notice that has_one is used for one side of a one-to-one association. There other side would use belongs_to. Example: class Unicycle << ActiveRecord::Base has_one :wheel end class Wheel << ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :unicycle end Associations described as has_many refer to a collection (array) of objects and therefore use the plural form: Examples: class Physician < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :appointments # This is an array of Appointment objects (plural) end I hope this makes things a little more clear to you. -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
