Hello,

My user model has three relations for the same message model, and is using raw SQL :/ Is there a better more rails way to achieve the same result?

Could the foreign key be changed dynamically? e.g User.messages.sent (foreign key = author_id) and User.messages.received (foreign key = recipient ) I have been trying to move some of the logic into scopes in the message model, but the user.id is not available from the message model...

Any thoughts?

Table layout:

  create_table "messages", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "subject"
    t.text     "body"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
    t.integer  "author_id"
    t.integer  "recipient_id"
    t.boolean  "author_deleted",    :default => false
    t.boolean  "recipient_deleted", :default => false
  end

This is my relations for my user model:

  has_many :messages_received, :foreign_key => "recipient_id", :class_name => "Message", :conditions => ['recipient_deleted = ?', false]
  has_many :messages_sent, :foreign_key => "author_id", :class_name => "Message", :conditions => ['author_deleted = ?', false]
  has_many :messages_deleted, :class_name => "Message", :finder_sql => 'SELECT * FROM Messages WHERE
                                                                        author_id = #{self.id} AND author_deleted = true OR
                                                                        recipient_id = #{self.id} AND recipient_deleted = true'

Best regards. Asbjørn Morell