Associations

Volt provides a nested model structure that can be accessed without any explicit declarations. However often you may want to associate other models using external id's. Volt uses the _id field naming convention. Volt provides belongs_to, has_many, and has_one methods to associate models.

class Person < Volt::Model
  has_many :addresses
end

class Address < Volt::Model
  belongs_to :person
  has_one :street
end

class Street < Volt::Model
  belongs_to :address
end

Has Many

You can use has_many to lookup all instances of another model that have a _id field pointing to the current model. For example if we had a person instance:

person.addresses
# => #<Volt::ArrayModel [#<Address ..>, #<Address ..>, ...]>

Calling .addresses on person would find all addresses with their person_id set to the id of the person model.

has_many associations return a cursor.

Options

You can pass the following options as the 2nd argument to has_many on a User model.

:collection - the name of the collection in the database, and the class that should be loaded when the models are returned

:foreign_key - (defaults to the current class name + "_id") If you did: has_many :posts, foreign_key: :user_id, it would do the following query: store.posts.where(user_id: self.id)

:local_key - the id of the model, defaults to self.id. If you did: has_many :posts, local_key: :user_system_id it would do the following query: store.posts.where(user_id: self.user_system_id)

Has One

You can call has_one in a model class to setup an association to a single other model. has_one takes a symbol for the name of the other model. If we passed :street on an Address model, Volt will look for a Street model that has the address_id set to the current address's id.

Has one takes the same options as has_many.

Belongs to

You can use belongs_to to lookup the parent of a model. So if we had an instance of address:

address.person.then do |person|
  # => person is: #<Person ...>
end

belongs_to associations return a promise that resolves with the associated model.

Options

You can pass the following options as the 2nd argument to belongs_to on a Post model.

:collection - the name of the collection in the database, and the class that should be loaded when the models are returned

:foreign_key - (the field name on the model that this model belongs to, defaults to :id) If you did: belongs_to :user, foreign_key: :user_system_id it would do the following query: store.users.where(user_system_id: self.user_id).first

:local_key - the key on this model that should be used to lookup the belongs_to association - defaults to the belongs_to collection name + "_id". If you did: belongs_to :user, local_key: :remote_user_id it would do the following query: store.users.where(user_id: self.remote_user_id).first