Question

I’m learning rails and I’m trying to figure out database associations. If I have a database table with say Users that has an id, name, email, etc. and a Message table with the message, a sender (User) and recipient (also a User), how do I set up the migration and the models. Here, I’m using Rails 3.1. I’m pretty sure I can do it with just one User in the Message table with the references:User in the migration, but I’m not sure how to set up two of them.

Answer 1

Some resources to get you started: Rails Tutorial: User Model RoR Guides: Migrations

First make your user migration

$ rails generate model User name:string email:string

Then your messages migration

$ rails generate model Message message:string user_id:integer

Then in your Messages model (/app/models/messages.rb)

belongs_to :user

And in your User model (/app/models/users.rb)

has_many :microposts

Obviously this is a rough sketch of what needs to happen, but that should get you started!