Rails Model has_many with multiple foreign_keys

Question

Relatively new to rails and trying to model a very simple family "tree" with a single Person model that has a name, gender, father_id and mother_id (2 parents). Below is basically what I want to do, but obviously I can't repeat the :children in a has_many (the first gets overwritten).

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
  has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
  has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
end

Is there a simple way to use has_many with 2 foreign keys, or maybe change the foreign key based on the object's gender? Or is there another/better way altogether?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Found a simple answer on IRC that seems to work (thanks to Radar):

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
  has_many :children_of_father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
  has_many :children_of_mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
  def children
     children_of_mother + children_of_father
  end
end

Answer 2

To improve on Kenzie's answer, you can achieve an ActiveRecord Relation by defining Person#children like:

def children
   children_of_mother.merge(children_of_father)
end

see this answer for more details

Answer 3

Used named_scopes over the Person model do this:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base

    def children
      Person.with_parent(id)
    end

    named_scope :with_parent, lambda{ |pid| 

       { :conditions=>["father_id = ? or mother_id=?", pid, pid]}
    }
 end

Answer 4

I believe you can achieve the relationships you want using :has_one.

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
  has_one :mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
  has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person'
end

I'll confirm and edit this answer after work ; )

Answer 5

I prefer to use scopes for this issue. Like this:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
  has_many :children_of_father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
  has_many :children_of_mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'

  scope :children_for, lambda {|father_id, mother_id| where('father_id = ? AND mother_id = ?', father_id, mother_id) }
end

This trick make it easy to get children without use instances:

Person.children_for father_id, mother_id

Answer 6

Not a solution to the general question as stated ("has_many with multiple foreign keys"), but, given a person can either be a mother or a father, but not both, I would add a gender column and go with

  has_many :children_of_father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
  has_many :children_of_mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'
  def children
    gender == "male" ? children_of_father : children_of_mother
  end

Answer 7

My answer to Associations and (multiple) foreign keys in rails (3.2) : how to describe them in the model, and write up migrations is just for you!

As for your code,here are my modifications

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'
  has_many :children, ->(person) { unscope(where: :person_id).where("father_id = ? OR mother_id = ?", person.id, person.id) }, class_name: 'Person'
end

So any questions?

Answer 8

I was looking for the same feature, if you don't want to return an array but a ActiveRecord::AssociationRelation, you can use << instead of +. (See the ActiveRecord documentation)

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person'
  belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person'

  has_many :children_of_father, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id'
  has_many :children_of_mother, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id'

  def children
     children_of_mother << children_of_father
  end
end