Populating one to many relationship in sails js without using primary key - mysql

Question

Every example code of one to many in sails/waterline documentation assumes the primary key is the association between two models (I think).
http://sailsjs.org/documentation/concepts/models-and-orm/associations/one-to-many
However i have models that have a referral column that references some other values similar to
User
{
id (primary): <int>
email: <string>
}
recordings
{
id (primary): <int>
email: <that email from user>
}
atm im trying
userModel.js
{
attributes: {
email: {
type: 'string',
size: 255,
unique: true
},
},
queries: {
columnName: 'email',
model: 'recordings'
}
.....
}
}
recordingsModel.js
{
attributes: {
email: {
type: 'string',
size: 255,
},
},
queries: {
model: 'user'
}
.....
}
}
and in the Controller
sails.models.user
.find()
.populate('queries')
.exec(function (err, results) {
});
But i get the error
: ER_BAD_FIELD_ERROR: Unknown column '__queries.queries' in 'field list'
Does anyone have a good tutorial for one to many relationships in waterline because the documentation on there site is pretty bad so i feel im just not understanding how to design the models.

Answer 1

From what I can gather, what you want is to be able to set up your userModel and recordingsModel models such that, by giving a recording a certain value for email, it will automatically be associated with any users that share that email. This is not something that the Waterline (the Sails ORM) supports.
Instead, your best option is to set the models up as indicated in the documentation:
// userModel.js
{
attributes: {
email: {
type: 'string',
size: 255,
unique: true
},
},
recordings: {
collection: 'recordingsModel',
via: 'user'
}
.....
}
}
// recordingsModel.js
{
attributes: {
email: {
type: 'string',
size: 255,
},
},
user: {
model: 'userModel'
}
}
}
My guess is that you're trying to avoid having to look up a user ID in order to associate a new recording with it. You can do this if you make email the primary key of the userModel; then when you create a new recording, you can set its user to an email address and voila: the two are linked.