How can I present a many-to-many relationship using a link table with ScalaQuery or SLICK?

Question

I've asked a similar question recently, and got a great reply on solving a many-to-many relationship problem with Lift Mapper. I looked at the ScalaQuery/SLICK documentation but it does not document an approach to persisting data where link tables are involved. If someone knows how to do many-to-many mapping using SLICK, it would be great if you can share it.

Answer 1

This test (created by Stefan Zeiger) is new in the SLICK test suite, and answers the question quite nicely:

def testManyToMany(): Unit = db withSession {

    object A extends Table[(Int, String)]("a") {
      def id = column[Int]("id", O.PrimaryKey)
      def s = column[String]("s")
      def * = id ~ s
      def bs = AToB.filter(_.aId === id).flatMap(_.bFK)
    }

    object B extends Table[(Int, String)]("b") {
      def id = column[Int]("id", O.PrimaryKey)
      def s = column[String]("s")
      def * = id ~ s
      def as = AToB.filter(_.bId === id).flatMap(_.aFK)
    }

    object AToB extends Table[(Int, Int)]("a_to_b") {
      def aId = column[Int]("a")
      def bId = column[Int]("b")
      def * = aId ~ bId
      def aFK = foreignKey("a_fk", aId, A)(a => a.id)
      def bFK = foreignKey("b_fk", bId, B)(b => b.id)
    }

    (A.ddl ++ B.ddl ++ AToB.ddl).create
    A.insertAll(1 -> "a", 2 -> "b", 3 -> "c")
    B.insertAll(1 -> "x", 2 -> "y", 3 -> "z")
    AToB.insertAll(1 -> 1, 1 -> 2, 2 -> 2, 2 -> 3)

  /*val q1 = for {
      a <- A if a.id >= 2
      aToB <- AToB if aToB.aId === a.id
      b <- B if b.id === aToB.bId
    } yield (a.s, b.s)*/

    val q1 = for {
      a <- A if a.id >= 2
      b <- a.bs
    } yield (a.s, b.s)

    q1.foreach(x => println(" "+x))

    assertEquals(Set(("b","y"), ("b","z")), q1.list.toSet)
  }

Update:

I'm not quite certain what would be the best way integrate business logic and persistence in Scala (as this is more than OO or FP), so I asked a new question about this. Hope this helps someone else who is also curious about this problem.