Scaffolding ActiveRecord: two columns of the same data type

Question

Another basic Rails question:

I have a database table that needs to contain references to exactly two different records of a specific data type.

Hypothetical

Answer 1

I have no idea how to do this with script/generate.

The underlying idea is easier to show without using script/generate anyway. You want two fields in your videogames table/model that hold the foreign keys to the companies table/model.

I'll show you what I think the code would look like, but I haven't tested it, so I could be wrong.

Your migration file has:

create_table :videogames do |t|
  # all your other fields
  t.int :developer_id
  t.int :publisher_id
end

Then in your model:

belongs_to :developer, class_name: "Company", foreign_key: "developer_id"
belongs_to :publisher, class_name: "Company", foreign_key: "publisher_id"

You also mention wanting the two companies to be distinct, which you could handle in a validation in the model that checks that developer_id != publisher_id.