Question

I’m building a sort of message board system for gaming and I’m having issues modeling the relationships. Here’s what I have so far:

Models
------
User (Has Many Posts)
Post (Belongs to User, Belongs to Game)
Game (Has Many Posts)

Here’s what I need to add.

Models
------
Server (Belongs to Game but also part of Post)
Replies (Belongs to Post and Post's User but needs to function like private messaging)

What’s the easiest way to model these two things? My best guess for Server is:

Server - Has Many Posts, Belongs To Game
Posts - Belongs To Server
Game - Has Many Servers

I have no idea where to even start with Replies. Posts and Users will have many Replies but Replies will have two users and a Post. Thanks.

Answer 1

I solved this with these relationships:

Model Server

belongs_to :game
has_many :posts

Model Game

has_many :posts
has_many :servers

Model Reply

belongs_to :post
belongs_to :poster, class_name: :user, foreign_key: :poster_id
belongs_to :replier, class_name: :user, foreign_key: :replier_id

Model Post

belongs_to :user
belongs_to :game
belongs_to :server
has_many :replies, dependent: :destroy

Model User

has_many :posts, dependent: :destroy
has_many :replies, dependent: :destroy