Question

i wanted to know about the data type references and some examples of how/why it would be used on a website. If their is a difference when using Ruby-on-Rails, i tagged it just in case. I am new at programming and it would help tremendously to explain everything in layman’s terms so i can slowly build my way up to being a computer wiz.

Appreciate the trouble in helping me, thanks.

Answer 1

I’m taking a guess that you’re referring to t.references :associated_model in a migration?

Suppose two models, Post and Author.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :author
end

class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :posts
end

Your migration contains:

create_table :posts do |t|
  t.references :author
end

This will create the author_id column on the posts table with the integer datatype.

In migrations, t.belongs_to is an alias for t.references and matches the naming used to set up the associations in your models.