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I’ve looked low and high for this feature in ActiveRecord but can’t seem to find a solution.

What I need is ability to specify associations by a column other than a primary key. For example:

create_table :nodes do |t|
  t.column :parent_id,        :integer
  t.column :uid,              :string,    :limit => 32
end

create_table :info do |t|
  t.column :uid,         :string, :limit => 32
  t.column :formatted,   :text
end

class Node < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_tree
  has_many :info, :foreign_key => :uid, :primary_key => :uid
end

class Info < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :node, :foreign_key => :uid, :primary_key => :uid
end

As you can see, I’ve used a made up :primary_key option to indicate which key column should be used. set_primary_key isn’t a good option here because UID column is for lose association and it isn’t a primary key.

Is this at all possible in Rails 1.2.3? Unfortunately my Rails core knowledge is very limited at this point and I wouldn’t be able to add this feature myself.