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ok, gents, your comments are well heeded. I am still a newbie here and a
mess is not what i want to try to fix later when i am already in production
with this and want to fix it.

thanks, will keep looking

shawn

On 6/27/07, dblack / wobblini.net <dblack / wobblini.net> wrote:
>
> Hi --
>
> On Thu, 28 Jun 2007, Giles Bowkett wrote:
>
> > On 6/27/07, Ball, Donald A Jr (Library) <donald.ball / nashville.gov>
> wrote:
> >> > ok, i will look that up. I am not looking to build a rails
> >> > app with this, i want to build a GUI app where our customers
> >> > can point different attributes to different models ( kinda
> >> > like setting a foriegn key dynamically, we are dealing with
> >> > lots of models here. So, i suppose i could store them in a
> >> > configuration file or something.
> >>
> >> I suspect you'd be much happier if these related attributes inherited
> >> from the same supermodel and used single-table inheritance, or if you
> >> used polymorphic associations instead. The latter sounds like it's more
> >> appropriate to your situation, but if your attribute models have
> similar
> >> characteristics, the former would be a better fit.
> >>
> >> Either sound more reasonable than mucking about with monkey-patching
> the
> >> class at run-time. Not nearly as much fun, mind you, but that's not
> >> always the best thing for which to optimize.
> >
> > You can do that:
> >
> > Foo.class_eval("has_many :bars")
>
> I think you could just do:
>
>    Foo.has_many :bars
>
> However...
>
> > But I think it could be an utterly heinous mess. You'd need the DB to
> > morph in an equivalently dynamic way, which is nontrivial.
>
> ...I totally agree about the heinous mess :-)
>
>
> David
>
> --
> * Books:
>    RAILS ROUTING (new! http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321509242)
>    RUBY FOR RAILS (http://www.manning.com/black)
> * Ruby/Rails training
>      & consulting:  Ruby Power and Light, LLC (http://www.rubypal.com)
>
>

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