Why polymorphic association doesn't work for STI if type column of the polymorphic association doesn't point to the base model of STI?

Question

I have a case of polymorphic association and STI here.

# app/models/car.rb
class Car < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :borrowable, :polymorphic => tru         


        

Answer 1

Just had this issue in Rails 4.2. I found two ways to resolve:

--

The problem is that Rails uses the base_class name of the STI relationship.

The reason for this has been documented in the other answers, but the gist is that the core team seem to feel that you should be able to reference the table rather than the class for a polymorphic STI association.

I disagree with this idea, but am not part of the Rails Core team, so don't have much input into resolving it.

There are two ways to fix it:

--

1) Insert at model-level:

class Association < ActiveRecord::Base

  belongs_to :associatiable, polymorphic: true
  belongs_to :associated, polymorphic: true

  before_validation :set_type

  def set_type
    self.associated_type = associated.class.name
  end
end

This will change the {x}_type record before the creation of the data into the db. This works very well, and still retains the polymorphic nature of the association.

2) Override Core ActiveRecord methods

#app/config/initializers/sti_base.rb
require "active_record"
require "active_record_extension"
ActiveRecord::Base.store_base_sti_class = false

#lib/active_record_extension.rb
module ActiveRecordExtension #-> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2328984/rails-extending-activerecordbase

  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    class_attribute :store_base_sti_class
    self.store_base_sti_class = true
  end
end

# include the extension 
ActiveRecord::Base.send(:include, ActiveRecordExtension)

####

module AddPolymorphic
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  
  included do #-> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28214874/overriding-methods-in-an-activesupportconcern-module-which-are-defined-by-a-cl
    define_method :replace_keys do |record=nil|
      super(record)
      owner[reflection.foreign_type] = ActiveRecord::Base.store_base_sti_class ? record.class.base_class.name : record.class.name
    end
  end
end

ActiveRecord::Associations::BelongsToPolymorphicAssociation.send(:include, AddPolymorphic)

A more systemic way to fix the issue is to edit the ActiveRecord core methods which govern it. I used references in this gem to find out which elements needed to be fixed / overridden.

This is untested and still needs extensions for some of the other parts of the ActiveRecord core methods, but seems to work for my local system.