Of course! Thanks very much or your replies, I really appreciate it. The app is an administrative tool, not a front end webstore. Sorry I wasn't more clear upfront, Sharagoz. The user will need to be able to create three types of items in the system via (nested model) forms: MenuItems, RecipeItems, and PurchaseItems. Ingredients are not a specific model that a user would have to interact with, as the RecipeItems and PurchaseItems are the Ingredients of other RecipeItems or MenuItems. I thought Ingredient would be an important object for the application as the name of the join model to link these items, however if another approach is recommended I am not hard set in this logic of course.
The end result will be similar to many of the 'add task to project/add questions and answers to survey' nested model forms there are numerous tutorials for, but the associations just don't seem as straightforward. For a MenuItem form the user should be able to add and remove RecipeItems or PurchaseItems as Ingredients of the MenuItem (with details like quantity as well that are particular to the join). For a RecipeItem form the user should be able to add and remove RecipeItems or PurchaseItems as Ingredients of the RecipeItem (again, with details like quantity as well that are particular to the join). PurchaseItems only need to be created as they are at the bottom of the chain so to speak and don't contain other items. For example, Flour might be a purchaseitem, Pasta Dough might be a RecipeItem, and Spaghetti might be a Menuitem. Colin, the RecipeItems technically are the recipes you might say, as the ingredients are tacked to them and there will be fields for instructions in the RecipeItem model as well. Thanks for your time to help a newb! It's frustrating to not be using the cooler features of Rails when you're stuck on the model mapping ;) -Andy -- 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-t...@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.
