Question

I have the following scenario I am trying to configure in a Ruby on Rails app (warning: I’m a beginner here)…

I have SupportType model that defines different levels of customer support options (Silver, Gold etc) with details about what that support type covers (24/7, business day only etc).

I have another model, Client that contains all of the basic customer information data.

I need to associate a Client to a SupportType (Client Jones has Gold-level support) but can’t understand the “proper” way to set up this relationship. Neither “has_many” or “has_one” seems to apply in this case.

How do I set this up with the goal of being able to display all client details and the support parameters in one view?

TIA!

Answer 1

class Client < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :support_type
end

class SupportType < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :clients
end

This way you can access client’s support type with a_client.support_type and see all the clients having gold support type with gold_support.clients

You can’t use has_one in the Client model because in that case Rails aspects to find a client_id in the support_types DB table and it’s not the case if I understood well since many clients can have the same SupportType.

PS: Remember to add a support_type_id column to your clients DB table