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Yep, that's how you do it. I've never used Cake, but Rails does it no problem. Well, I mean, it's a bit more inconvenient then when the join table can be completely ignored and invisible, but it works, I've done it. http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html#the-has-many-through-association On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 3:02 PM, Ken Irwin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hi folks, > > TL;DR: when you have a database table whose whole job is to contain pairs > of keys connecting ID's of related tables, what if you want to say more > about that relationship (e.g. a time-frame in which that relationship > existed)? I'm particularly working in a Rails-like CakePHP context. > > My particular case: > > I'm working on a database project with a faculty member who's interested > in certain women who were associated with particular convents once upon a > time. > > Our prototype database has tables for > > Women > -id > -name > -birth > -death > -etc > > Convents > -id > -name > -location > -etc > > Convents_Women > -woman_id > -convent_id > > I'm working in CakePHP, which has a Rails-like db structure, and this is > how it likes to handle relationships. > > What I'm wondering is this: if there is other information about a > relationship other than that it exists (e.g. the dates during which a > person was at a convent; what their role was during that time, etc), is > there a preferred / customary way of representing that? I had imagined that > the convents_women table might look like: > > -woman_id > -convent_id > -role > -start_date > -end_date > > But the Cake/Rails scaffolding system doesn't seem to have a way of > working with that. Or at least I haven't found the magic words to find a > good explanation. > > I could, I imagine, subsequently add table fields to convents_women; but I > wonder where we'd want to add that information in a generic application > scaffold, or would I have to build some cockamamie extra view? > > I'd welcome any thoughts on the matter. I'd also be delighted to hear from > other folks who are using CakePHP. I'm very new to it. > > Thanks > Ken >