我应该在Rails项目中以这种“ has_many：through”关系使用ENUM还是创建另一个数据透视表？

Question

I am beginner Rails developer trying to build an interface for a movie database. I am in the middle of creating a "has_many :through" many-to-many relationship between a person model and a project model using a pivot table called "persons_projects". This table currently has 2 columns: person_id and project_id. I want to add another column to indicate the role that the person is playing in the project (actor, director, etc). Should I create a new table for the roles and add the new column as a foreign key in persons_projects as role_id or is this where I would use an ENUM with values such as "ACTOR", "DIRECTOR"? I've never used ENUMs and was wondering if this is a good use case?

Answer 1

Should I create a new table for the roles and add the new column as a foreign key in persons_projects as role_id?

No, you shouldn't, because the number of roles is just a few, and stable. So it is inefficient to create a new table.

I would use an ENUM with values such as "ACTOR", "DIRECTOR"? I've never used ENUMs and was wondering if this is a good use case?

Of course, this is absolutely the use case for using enum , you can do something like this:

class PersonProject < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :person
  belongs_to :project
  enum role: [:actor, :director]
end