polymorphic activerecords in rails?

Question

Hi so I have a list of 'areas' that are just areas of my site. I want to be able to insert them in to the database and say what type of area they are, this could be the name of the model that inherits from a base Area. This way I can write a generic controller which uses different views and different logic from the loaded model to decide how the page should act.

Trouble is I have no idea how to do this as I'm new to rails.. Any pointers? (or anyone saying "don't do it like that! do it like this!" would also be much appreciated)

Thanks

Answer 1

I have just found Single Table Inheritance. This appears like it will solve my problem

for more information read here:

http://juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2006/06/03/rails-single-table-inheritance/

Answer 2

You'll want to create a column named :type

Rails will automatically use the type column to determine the class of the child class.

Then you can do something like:

class Area < ActiveRecord::Base

end

class UserPage < Area

end

So then when you do

UserPage.create( :key => 'value')

It will create an entry in your areas table with the type field set to UserPage.