Many-to-Many-to-Many relationship with need for another specific model

Question

I have a many-to-many relationship between Supermarket, Product and Brand through the Supply- and Origin-mod

Answer 1

Here, I might have supply belong to origin instead of product.

Also, think about whether you need SpecificCombination. What operations are you going to do with it? Are you going to list all the SpecificCombinations in your database? Are you going to search to find a specific one? Are you going to create a new combination?

Then think if these operations can be done simply with the other classes?

class Supermarket < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :supplies
  has_many :origins, :through => :supplies

  def self.choice
    Supermarket.all.map { |supermarket| [ supermarket.name, supermarket.id ] }
  end
end

end

class Supply < ActiveRecord::Base  
  belongs_to :origin
  belongs_to :supermarket  
end

class Origin < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :supplies
  belongs_to :brands
end


walmart = Supermarket.create(:name => "Walmart");

cornflakes = Product.create(:name => "Corn Flakes");
kellogs = Brand.create(:name => "Kellog's");
walmart.origins.create(:product_id => cornflakes, :brand_id = kellogs)