This is missing the test cases; also, the issue raised in the ticket you linked to specifically occurs and causes problems only in the non-STI case.

I've updated the diff with passing test cases, only I'm not sure why this is the expected behaviour. in the application I'm working on there are Events and Shows. both are virtually identical except that Shows have bands and venues and there needs to be a distinction between the two, so STI is being attempted

the problem came up when bringing in a permission system. so saying these are our models:

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
end

class Show < Event
  belongs_to :venue
  has_many :bands
end

class Permission < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :object, :polymorphic => true
end

when creating a show and adding it to the permissions table the object_type column is set to Event, which seems undesirable in this case. is this a problem with the application's design or a problem within ActiveRecord?

whoops, here's a patch more like the one found in the ticket linked above

The behavior in the current code is correct; putting the STI type into object_type essentially denormalizes the database - you've got the same value in object_type and the association target's type field. Changing (in your example) a Show to another subclass of Event would mean that you'd need to change every polymorphic association key referring to that record. Not a common case, but it happens.

thanks for the explanation. I also didn't know this little ActiveRecord tidbit:

Event.find(3)
-> #<Event ...>

Event.find(4)
-> #<Show ...>

so when actually iterating through a collection of permissions, their classes are still respected. though it does make you use object.class.base_class.name.to_s when checking for permission

Same code as above but with formatting.

Votables

class Poll < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :possibles 
end

class RankingPoll < Poll
  has_many :votes, :as => :votable, :class_name => "RankingVote" 
end

class RatingPoll < Poll
  has_many :votes, :as => :votable, :class_name => "RankingVote" 
end

class Request < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :votes, :as => :votable, :class_name => "RequestVote" 
end

Votes

class Vote
  belongs_to :poll, :polymorpic => true 
end

class RatingVote < Vote
end

class RankingVote < Vote
end

class RequestVote < Vote
  belongs_to :votable, :polymorphic => :true, :class_name => "Request" 
end