Question

I have a User class with reference to a Message class. The message class has a user_id (which is the sender) and a receiver_id. So in the User class I have

  has_many :messages   has_many :messages, :foreign_key => 'receiver_id' 

and then in the Message class I have

  belongs_to :user 

The first relationship — via user_id — goes perfectly well. I haven’t the slightest idea what to put in the Message class for the second relationship. The messages table is built with both user_id and receiver_id, so the support is there.

Is this even possible?

Also, then I’d have no idea how to get to the messages RECEIVED by a user… or the User who received a message 🙂

[I know that I can work around this by having a sender table and a receiver table and a messages table and maybe a bunch of other tables (a conversations table!), but I’d like to do it like this, for the fun of it. This application will be used for learning only.]

Also important: where would the docs be for this? This is not very helpful.

Answer 1

In your User class:

has_many :messages has_many :received_messages,           :foreign_key => 'receiver_id', :class_name => 'Message' 

In your Message class:

belongs_to :user belongs_to :receiver, :class_name => 'User'   @user = User.first @user.messages @user.received_messages