Question

I have a Record model and in order to edit this model, you must be logged in as an instance of Admin. I would like to have a column called last_modified_by which points to the Admin who last modified the Record. In the database, I was thinking it would be good in the records table to add a column that holds the Admin’s id; however, the only way I know how to do that is with an association. These two models are not associated with each other so an association doesn’t make a lot of sense. Is there any other way I might be able to accomplish this task without resorting to associations? Any advice would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Hmm, I think the association is a good tool here. You might want to try to hack it somehow but I think nothing you can conjure up will ever be as good as an association via a foreign_key(also so fast). But perhaps you would like to name your association and do something like:

class Record < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :culprit, :class_name => 'Admin', :foreign_key => 'last_modified_by'
end

or give it some more senseful naming?