I need to associate two models with a simple has_many. The problem is that I do not want to use id (_id) as the primary key for the association. I still want the model to continue to use the default ObjectIds for everything else.
(runs on Rails3.1 + Mongoid)
So basically I want:
class Message ... field :message_id, :default => proc { "fail-#{Time.now.to_f.to_s}" } ... has_many :message_reports, primary_key: :message_id, foreign_key: :message_id ... end class MessageReport ... field :message_id, :default => proc { "fail-#{Time.now.to_f.to_s}" } ... has_many :message, primary_key: :message_id, foreign_key: :message_id ... end
This will only work for ActiveRecord. Mongoid does not support the primary_key parameter.
So, how do I get the same results for Mongoid collections?
Before saying: do not do this ...
The reason I really need kay in this field, and not the correct identifier, is because these are messages ... and message_ids are the unique identifiers returned by the API that I call to send the message. Later, the same identifier is received in callbacks on the other hand.
I could just make queries and insert them into a method to find the “related” reports from the message and vice versa ... I would prefer that they be actual associations, if possible.
I could make the process of receiving the report search and match objects for the association ... but I would prefer not to assign this responsibility to it when it is partly superfluous, and it has nothing to do with this data, other than checking and saving.
In short: I would prefer an association :)