Question

If I have a table called enrollments and this is my current basic enrollment setup:

class Enrollment < ActiveRecord::Base      
  belongs_to :father
  belongs_to :mother
  belongs_to :child
end

class Father < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :enrollments
  has_many :children
  validates :first_name, :presence => true
  validates :last_name, :presence => true
end

Now I want to add a guardian_1_id and a guardian_2_id to theenrollments table. How would I set that up?

Answer 1

You might be best off using a polymorphic association, e.g.

class Enrollment 
  belongs_to :enrollable, :polymorphic => true
end

class Father
 has_many :enrollments, :as => enrollable
end

This shoudl give you some flexibility in terms of whether there are 1, 2, or more guardians per situation. Also, you could add validation that caps it at two.