Best way to implement Categories and Subcategories with flexible depth in Rails?

Question

I have a Category and Subcategory models in my project. I would like to have many sub-levels in a flexible way. I thought making a self referential "parent" foreign key but I'm not quite sure how to do it. Any ideas? Thanks!

Cat1
    Sub1
        SubSub1
        SubSub2
    Sub2
Cat2
    Sub1
Cat3
    Sub1
    Sub2
        SubSub1

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 20 '10 at 15:42

5

Try the acts_as_tree plug-in

answered Apr 20 '10 at 15:42

Tony Fontenot

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score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '10 at 18:09

5

Awesome_nested_set is the best solution, imo, for these types of structures in rails. http://github.com/collectiveidea/awesome_nested_set

answered Apr 20 '10 at 18:09

Peer Allan

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Agreed. It's nasty when it comes to writes, but when it comes to reads, it kicks ass. You can get the whole tree structure with one query. – changelog Apr 21 '10 at 12:40

Best way to implement Categories and Subcategories with flexible depth in Rails?

2 Answers2