How to customize Rails 3 STI column name

Question

I have a class named Post:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
end

I have a class named Question that inheriting f

Answer 1

You can change the name of the single table inheritance column like so:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.inheritance_column = 'type_column_name'

end

However, there is no way to cause Rails to use integers instead of storing the actual type as a string, which makes me think that this may not be a great use case for single target inheritance. Perhaps a scope would suit you better instead:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :questions, where(:post_type_id => 0)
  scope :answers, where(:post_type_id => 1)

end

@questions = Post.questions.all
@answers = Post.answers.all

Answer 2

This might be what you're looking for.

http://lorefnon.me/2014/07/27/optimizing-sti-columns.html

EDIT: Updated URL (thanks @SubhashChandran)

Answer 3

There actually is a way, as with all things. You can override the find_sti_class method to look for your type based on an integer.

Answer 4

You will need to set your column type using self.inheritance_column Then you will have to provide your own behavior for the following method: "sti_class_for(type_name)" which is located in this file "activerecord/lib/active_record/inheritance.rb"

so you will have to monkey patch the above file.

This is not the recommended way, you will have to make a migration and change all the values to match your class name.