On Feb 4, 10:06 pm, Vincent P <ease...@gmail.com> wrote: > In my app, each user may have one of the 30 predefined occupations. > Each occupation is a string of about 30 characters. Should I: > > a. store this list of occupations in a mysql table and make > occupation_id a foreign key in the User model? OR > b. define this list as an array of constants in the User model? > > In option b, the array definition will be long and take up space in my > user.rb file. Can I put it somewhere else? > > I am leaning toward option a because in the future I may want to allow > each user to have more than one occupations. In that case, I will > need to have another table to map the many-to-many relationship > between users and occupations, right? > > In the future, more occupations may be added to the list. I may also > try the autocomplete plugin.
Given the possible expansion to many-to-many, and the potential for more - option A definitely makes more sense. Be aware that it's not *always* the right way, though: I've got a legacy DB I'm working with right now that contains DB tables for branches of the US armed forces (silly, since they are unlikely to change) or even a table like this: id => name 1 => First 2 => Second 3 => Third Apparently some Access programmers haven't heard of "helpers"... --Matt Jones -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-t...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
