DataMapper ORM v1.8.2

[eluser]WanWizard[/eluser]
In cases where you have data in your relationship table that you need to access or update frequently, and for cases where you need a relation to the relationship table, you create a model for the relationship table, and change the relationship definitions:

Contact -> has_many -> ContactMethod, and ContactMethod -> has_one -> Contact
Method -> has_many -> ContactMethod, and ContactMethod -> has_one -> Method

So you split the many-to-many into two one-to-many relations. This way you can use the ContactMethod model to access the fields in the relationship table directly, without using join_fields().

Any extra models that need to be related to the relationship table now be defined against the ContactMethod model.

(ContactMethod is just an example, you can name the model what you want, and hard-code the table name in the model)