I'm having a hard time understanding how to implement a single model self-join in Rails. The Guide to ActiveRecord Associations section 2.10 briefly explains Self-Joins but doesn't offer enough information, and every example or post about this such references the Friendly Friend Railcast example that isn't a single model self join, as described in the Rails Guide section 2.10.
The idea is a model that has_many and belongs_to itself, without needing a separate table for the relationship. The only reason I see for needing a separate table is if you want the relationship to contain more information than just the relationship. e.g. "best friends", "barely know them"
I have a simple Post schema:
create_table "posts", :force => true do |t|
t.datetime "posted"
t.string "nick"
t.string "title"
t.text "content"
t.integer "parent_post_id"
t.datetime "created_at", :null => false
t.datetime "updated_at", :null => false
end
The parent_post_id is a self-reference to other Post post_id's. The posts.rb model has the relationship defined:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :replies, :class_name => "Post"
belongs_to :parent_post, :class_name => "Post",
:foreign_key => "parent_post_id"
end
In the Controller or View I'm hoping to be able to do something like this:
@posts.each do |post|
...
@replies = post.replies
@replies.each do |reply|
...
end
end
Or find a post's parent:
@parent_post = post.parent_post
This may all be some syntax mis-understanding. So thanks in advance to anyone who can slap some sense into me. I've looked through every SO and blog post out there and none try the single model self-referential self-join method described in the Guide.
Points for anyone offering an explanation that doesn't point to the Friendly Friend example that uses a separate relationship table.
act_as_tree
are single-table, single-model self-referential--have you considered looking at something like that? – Dave Newton