ActiveRecord and Foreign Keys

[Carl Vondrick]

Hi everyone,
I am having trouble wrapping my mind around the ActiveRecord pattern and
foreign keys.

I understand that for each table, there should be a class, and each row
is is effectively an instance.

But, my problem arises when I look at foreign keys and advanced
relationships. For basic foreign keys, I can just automatically
reference to the object. Example:

Table: invoice
id, notes

Table: items
id, cost, invoice_id

When working with an instance with items, I can easily load a new object
called "invoice."

But, what if I am already working with invoice, and I want to load
items? I can't think of any way to abstractly relate the two.

Also, what if I want to two things that are both a "has many"
relationship? For example, if I take users that can have multiple
qualities, I would need three tables: one for users, one for the
qualities, and one to link.

Table: users
id, username

Table: link
id, user_id, quality_id

table: qualities
id, quality_name

How does ActiveRecord adapt to this? Any insight that you have or
suggestions are appreciated! I can't think of an elegant solution.

Carl