Ecto: dynamic foreign key relationships

Phoenix Forum Questions / Help
,
1

I have a self-referenced (parent/children) model in my app.

I know I could describe relationships this way:

belongs_to(:parent, Model)
has_many(:children, Model, foreign_key: :parent_id)

But in my case, the model has a code attribute.

Children Models code look like A10101, while parents look like A10.

Can I describe those relationship without having to create an extra parent_id column, using something like a dynamic foreign key?

I could write the methods:

def parent(model) do
  parent_code = String.slice(model.code, 0..2)
  if length(parent_code) > 0 do
    Repo.get_by(__MODULE__, code: parent_code)
  end
end

def children(model) do
  if Regex.match?(~r/[A-Z]\d\d/, model.code) do
    Repo.all(from m in Model, where: like(m.code, "#{model.code}%"))
  end
end

But having proper relationships would allow me to use things like Repo.preload which would be neat.

Thanks