From: "Ball, Donald A Jr (Library)" <donald.ball@...>
Date: 2007-06-28T06:28:33+09:00
Subject: Re: ActiveRecord (not necessarily rails)

> ok, i will look that up. I am not looking to build a rails 
> app with this, i want to build a GUI app where our customers 
> can point different attributes to different models ( kinda 
> like setting a foriegn key dynamically, we are dealing with 
> lots of models here. So, i suppose i could store them in a 
> configuration file or something.

I suspect you'd be much happier if these related attributes inherited
from the same supermodel and used single-table inheritance, or if you
used polymorphic associations instead. The latter sounds like it's more
appropriate to your situation, but if your attribute models have similar
characteristics, the former would be a better fit.

Either sound more reasonable than mucking about with monkey-patching the
class at run-time. Not nearly as much fun, mind you, but that's not
always the best thing for which to optimize.

- donald