ActiveRecord::Base Without Table

Question

This came up a bit ago ( rails model attributes without corresponding column in db ) but it looks like the Rails plugin mentioned is not maintained ( http://agilewebdevelopm

Answer 1

UPDATE: For Rails 3 this can be done very easy. In Rails 3+ you can use the new ActiveModel module and its submodules. This should work now:

class Tableless
  include ActiveModel::Validations

  attr_accessor :name

  validates_presence_of :name
end

For more info, you can check out the Railscast (or read about it on AsciiCasts) on the topic, as well as this blog post by Yehuda Katz.

OLD ANSWER FOLLOWS:

You may need to add this to the solution, proposed by John Topley in the previous comment:

class Tableless

  class << self
    def table_name
      self.name.tableize
    end
  end

end

class Foo < Tableless; end
Foo.table_name # will return "foos"

This provides you with a "fake" table name, if you need one. Without this method, Foo::table_name will evaluate to "tablelesses".