**ENG**lish **REL**ational Framework¶ ↑

*A simple and elegant way to specify relations without explicitly making a table for each one.*

*Modify or delete this text in the editor above.*

WMD’s context-sensitive commands pack a lot of power into a simple user interface. Here are some advanced features to try:

In a way, we are using join tables–but just one instead of dozens of hundreds. Normal join tables serve one single purpose–to connect A to B under circumstance C. Like to link all of the users who were tagged in a specific photo ID. But if you step back, all that join tables really do is link one object to another with a little bit of context. Engrel puts the context into the join table and voila, one join table can link any two objects and provide (often even more) useful context than a full join table. No really.

Sounds like something only a linguistics professor would care about, but in reality, you use them all the time and they’re very helpful in describing relations. For instance, taking an example from Facebook:

I was tagged in photo ID 23982930   (technically there's already a preposition there, but watch now)
I was tagged in photo ID 23982930 by user ID 850932

More info, right? And more data is always better, we think.

irb(main):022:0> s = Engrel::Sentence.claim(User["00002394802384"], :likes, Page["overwerk"])
=> #<Engrel::Sentence id: 1, subject_id:  00002394802384, subject_type: "User", direct_object_id: 133241766707287, direct_object_type: "Page", verb: "likes", data: nil, created_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27", updated_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27">

irb(main):024:0> s = Engrel::Sentence.claim(User["00002394802384"], :likes, Page["overwerk"])
=> #<Engrel::Sentence id: 1, subject_id:  00002394802384, subject_type: "User", direct_object_id: 133241766707287, direct_object_type: "Page", verb: "likes", data: nil, created_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27", updated_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27">

irb(main):025:0> s.prep(:via, User["00002394804563"])
=> #<Engrel::PrepositionalPhrase id: 2, parent_id: 1, parent_type: "Engrel::Sentence", preposition: "via", modifier: nil, indirect_object_id: 00002394804563, indirect_object_type: "User", created_at: "2010-11-18 20:15:39", updated_at: "2010-11-18 20:15:39", started_at: nil, ended_at: nil>

irb(main):026:0> pp s
=> #<Engrel::Sentence id: 1, subject_id:  00002394802384, subject_type: "User", direct_object_id: 133241766707287, direct_object_type: "Page", verb: "likes", data: nil, created_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27", updated_at: "2010-11-18 18:41:27">

irb(main):027:0> pp s.prepositional_phrases
=> [#<Engrel::PrepositionalPhrase id: 2, parent_id: 1, parent_type: "Engrel::Sentence", preposition: "via", modifier: nil, indirect_object_id: 00002394804563, indirect_object_type: "User", created_at: "2010-11-18 20:15:39", updated_at: "2010-11-18 20:15:39", started_at: nil, ended_at: nil>]

irb(main):028:0> pp s.to_sentence
=> "User[Matt Lightner#00002394802384] likes Page[OVERWERK#133241766707287] via User[Some Friend#00002394804563 indirect_object])

This was originally designed to solve a problem I ran into while trying to persist Facebook Graph data, and works well with the fbgraph (not fb_graph) library. I recommend you check that out too!

• Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn’t been implemented or the bug hasn’t been fixed yet

• Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn’t requested it and/or contributed it

• Fork the project

• Start a feature/bugfix branch

• Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution

• Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

Copyright © 2010 Matt Lightner. See LICENSE.txt for further details.