Can a has_and_belongs_to_many association include an "owner'?

Question

So in my case, I have a Project and Client model, and they have a have_and_belongs_to_many association between each other, as shown below:

# app/models/client.rb
class Client < ApplicationRecord
    has_and_belongs_to_many :projects
end

# app/models/project.rb
class Project < ApplicationRecord
    has_and_belongs_to_many :clients
end

However, I would also like to include another field in Project that associates an original Client that essentially owns that project, but is sharing it with other Clients.

Through a has_and_belongs_to_many association in the very basic way, I can't really see how to do this. I thought about adding another field in the model called owner_client_id, but I'm not sure if this goes against best practices or if it's not recommended, etc.

Is there any way that I can still make this association?

You should look at using `has_many :through`, you can add extra attributes on the join model. — Kedarnag Mukanahallipatna, Sep 28 '18 at 08:09
I didn't know you could create this in a join table, but I ended up following this and all seems to be well: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9130445/has-and-belongs-to-many-or-has-many-for-user-group-relationship — LewlSauce, Sep 28 '18 at 08:15
Make sure you read [this](https://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html#choosing-between-has-many-through-and-has-and-belongs-to-many) before you decide on your approach. — Kedarnag Mukanahallipatna, Sep 28 '18 at 08:19

Can a has_and_belongs_to_many association include an "owner'?

0 Answers0