I have a core model for an Item
, and a script to populate it from a custom source (think, RSS feed). In the feed, each Item is identified with a guid
; in my system, Item only has an autogenerated id
primary key.
I want to have, let's say, ItemFeedInfo
that maps guid->id
(so that I can distinguish between new vs. modified Items)
I'm thinking of creating
class ItemFeedInfo
belongs_to :Item
end
I would prefer not to modify Item
since its definition is logically independent of ItemFeedInfo
However, every example I can find of using belongs_to
, mentions a has_one
counterpart. Is it required?
It doesn't matter.
belongs_to
simply adds some methods to the ItemFeedInfo
class. You know when you do item_feed_info.items.find_all
... The items
is just a method which got dynamically added when you called belongs_to
.
If you don't modify the Item
class, then you simply won't be adding the methods on the other side. You won't be able to do item.item_feed_infos.find_all
, because without adding has_many :item_feed_infos
, that method won't have been added to the Item
class, but if you never actually need to do this, it won't matter.
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