Using join tables in ruby on rails

Question

Lets say I have two databases: one for students and one for classes. I would like to be able to \'add\' classes to a specific student and also be able to add students to a

Answer 1

This is an old question, but just in case anyone stumbles upon this like I did, you can now have the relationships has_and_belongs_to_many. So yes, you would create a join table:

create_join_table :students, :courses do |t|
  t.integer :student_id
  t.integer :course_id
end

And then in the models, you would say that a student has_and_belongs_to_many :courses And a course has_and_belongs_to_many :students. There is no need to make a third class called CourseStudent. This link has all this information

Answer 2

Yes, this is a many-to-many relationship (class has many students, student has many classes). For this you'll use a has_many :through relation. Take a look at the docs for ActiveRecord::Associations (Ctrl-F for "Association Join Models").

In a migration, t.references :students is how you would specify a belongs_to relation, as it just adds a student_id column (which can only accommodate one id, i.e. one student). A join model, however, will have two columns: student_id and class_id. (Incidentally, calling a model 'Class' in Ruby is asking for trouble. Might I suggest 'Course'?)

Answer 3

Everything true what @Jordan said, here the concrete steps to take:

1. Create a migration: rails g model CourseStudent creates a join model for the n:m relation, and the migration to the corresponding table.

2. Edit the migration file CreateCourseStudent so it contains the following:

   class CreateCourseStudent < ActiveRecord::Migration
     def change
       create_table :course_students do |t|
   
         # Your code comes here
         t.integer :student_id
         t.integer :course_id
   
         # Here comes the generated code 
         t.timestamps
       end
     end
   end
   

3. Run the migration: rake db:migrate. As a result, the join table should now exist in your database.

4. Add to the models the following code

   class Course < ActiveRecord::Base
     has_many :course_students
     has_many :students, :through => :course_students
   end
   
   class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
     has_many :course_students
     has_many :courses, :through => :course_students
   end
   
   class CourseStudent < ActiveRecord::Base
     belongs_to :student
     belongs_to :course
   end
   

You are now able to use the methods generated by the methods belongs_to and has_many:

• @course.students
• @student.courses

Try to find all the relevant facts and snippets in the Rails Guides, there you should find all information you need to get on track. Good luck!