Hello,
I'm relatively new to Rails.. first post here :)
Hope I'm not repeating an already asked question though I assume I'm
not the first one looking for how to best implement such an
association.. Anyway, haven't found the answers I was looking for when
searching for it, thus posting here a question. Apologise in advance
if it's a repeated one.. but would still appreciate any helpful
suggestion / direction / reference.. a lot.. :)
I started working on a project where there are hierarchical groups of
users.
If I were to call the groups GroupAUsers, GroupBUsers, GroupCUsers,
GroupDUsers (may be more Groups, behaving the same way), then the
connection between the users in each group can be illustrated as
follows:
* GroupAUsers have many GroupBUsers, plus have their own
groupAUser attributes. They also have full access to all other User
groups hierarchically “below” GroupBUsers.
* GroupBUsers belong to GroupAUsers and have many GroupCUsers,
plus have their own specific GroupBUsers' attributes. For each User of
GroupCUsers they have full access to his/her GroupDUsers.
* GroupCUsers belong to GroupBUsers and have many (each such user)
GroupDUsers, plus have their own specific attributes
* GroupDUsers belong to GroupCUsers and have their own specific
attributes.
* And so on.. (in case of additional such groups)
A better description of this would probably be (writing code only to
explain, this is not a copy paste of my code, though it's what I have
in mind right now as for associating the models)
class GroupAUser < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :group_b_users
has_many :group_c_users, :through => :group_b_users
# Not sure how should the
# has_many :group_d_users
# association look like …
# it's a 'nested through'..
# which means I need some help here as well in case that's what I
should be doing..
# plus it becomes worse in case I have additional groups
end
class GroupBUser < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :group_a_user
has_many :group_c_users
has_many :group_d_users, :through => :group_c_users
end
class GroupCUser < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :group_b_user
has_many :group_d_users
end
class GroupDUser < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :group_c_user
end
If this is the way I illustrate the associations, I guess my User
model would look something like this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :group_a_users
has_many :group_b_users
has_many :group_c_users
has_many :group_d_users
end
so I have access from each User's information to their suitable
information as being a user inside a group.
This is rather ugly, plus writing it down now, it seems wrong..
Reason I'm not using inheritance (say, from my User model) is I do not
wish to end up with one huge table, rails being STI.. mainly that..
Another important point is a user can belong to several groups and
should be able to see all relevant information according to his/her
role in each group.
Not sure yet how to best implement this “feature” as well.. if anyone
has any suggestions he/she cares to share, I'd love to learn
I'm currently using Rails 2.3.8 & Ruby 1.8.7.
Also, for authentication and authorization – planning on using
Authlogic and Declarative_Authorization.
If anyone can direct me to a “best practice” of modelling hierarchical
associations or suggest me anything else (including upgrading
versions, though I did not get the impression there are significant
changes from reading the associations Rails documentation), or even a
“you got it completely wrong” (with some explanation if you can please
be kind enough) – I'd *really* and truly appreciate it.
Hope I managed to be clear enough..
Many thanks,
Allison.
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