Is it OK to manage associations manually?

Posted by sosborn on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by sosborn
Published on 2010-04-06T02:53:22Z Indexed on 2010/04/06 3:23 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 215

Filed under:

ruby-on-rails

Here are the relevant models:

User Product Order

A User can sell or buy products An order has a buyer, a seller and one product

I know that I can do this with a HABTM relationship between orders and user, but is seems to me like it would be simpler to put in the Order table the following columns:

:seller_id :buyer_id

and manage those relationships manually as orders are only created once and never edited. However, this doesn't seem very Rails-like and I am wondering if I am missing something conceptually at the HABTM relationship.

Related posts about ruby-on-rails

Ruby on Rails - How can I start? [closed]

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have misconception in understanding the relationship between Ruby language and Ruby on Rails Framework. Because of 'I am an absolute beginner' in web development I have no idea if I have to grasp the fundamentals of Ruby before I go with Ruby on Rails! I also want to ask who is behind both Ruby… >>> More
DES3 decryption in Ruby on Rails

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
My RoR server receives a string, that was encrypted in C++ application using des3 with base64 encoding The cipher object is created so: cipher = OpenSSL::Cipher::Cipher::new("des3") cipher.key = key_str cipher.iv = iv_str key_str and iv_str: are string representations of key and initialization… >>> More
Ruby on rails: Image downloads with Authentication/Authorization/Time outs

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi Guys, I'm having few doubts on implementing file downloads. I'm creating an app where I use attachment_fu with Amazon s3 to upload files. Things are working pretty well so far on uploading side. Now its the time to start the file downloads. Here is what I need, a logged in user search and browse… >>> More
Ruby on Rails deployment, on "thin" server with lot of attachments

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
A lot of PDFs are stored inside MySQL as a BLOB field for each PDF file. The average file size is 500K each. The Rails app will stream the :binary data as file downloads, where there is a user click on the download link. Assume there is a maximum of 5 users downloading 5 PDFs concurrently, what… >>> More
Apply Behavior Driven Development to Ruby on Rails with Rspec

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
Applying the Behavior Driven Development (BDD) methodology to your Rails development takes you beyond traditional Test Driven Development. Learn how to do it with the Ruby-based BDD framework RSpec. >>> More

Developer IT