Question

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.

Answer 1

no it’s not a ruby way although you are not edited order once it created.

Use following relationship in model i think it will work. No check though

User.rb
has_many :users
has_many :purchase, :class_name =>Order, :foreign_key=>'buyer_id'
has_many :sells, :class_name =>Order, :foreign_key=>'seller_id'

Product.rb
belongs_to :user
has_many :orders

Order.rb
belongs_to :buyer, :class_name =>User, :foreign_key=>'buyer_id'
belongs_to :seller, :class_name =>User, :foreign_key=>'seller_id'
belongs_to :product