Rails Nested Attributes, Relationship for Shared or Common Object -

This should be a common problem, so I'm surprised Google has not left any more responses. I am having a lot of different types of institutions, those institutions need the relationship of a separate entity. For example:

1. Address : A model that stores the street address details (this is my shared entity)
2. PersonContact : A model that includes things like home phone, cell phone and email address
3. DogContact : Obviously, if you want to contact a dog , Then you will have to go to the place where it lives.

Therefore, PersonContact and DogContact must have the foreign key address . Even though they are actually "master" object of address , it will be fine, except that accepts __nested_attributes_for foreign key to Calculating to work correctly in the address .

The key to keeping foreigners is key in address , but do you own the PersonContact and DogContact ?

I believe you should use it.

You should see a addressable_id and a addressable_type on your address and your model should look like this:

  class address & lt; ActiveRecord :: Base is_to: addressable ,: polymorphic = & gt; True ending class person contacts & lt; ActiveRecord :: Base has_one: address, as in => : Addressable End Class DogContact & lt; ActiveRecord :: Base has_one: address, as in => : Addressable end