11.13.07

ActiveRecord has_one versus belongs_to (finally understood)

Posted in Programming, Ruby at 6:57 pm by Robert Horvick

I spent some time googling for an answer to the question I’ve had about when to use has_one or belongs_to. I came across Duane’s blog where he addressed this exact issue.

Ultimately the phrase that made it sink in was:

“With belongs_to, the table accepts responsibility for the foreign key. With has_one, the table expect the other table to hold it.” (which he attributes to this wiki).

The main shift is that I need to stop thinking in terms of the foreign keys and not the containing objects.

So thanks, Duane.