Question

building a devise rails app with user accounts as subdomains Im unable to figure out how to redirect to a default ( default.domain.com) subdomain when the subdomain a user visits is non existant.

For example:

• user.domain.com works ( user exists in database )
• user2.domain.com fails ( user not in database ) and should be redirected to default.domain.com

How can this be accomplished?
Im using below code but the redirect based on Rails.env gets in a never ending loop 🙁

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery

  layout "application"
  before_filter :account

  def account
    @user     = User.where(:subdomain => request.subdomain).first || not_found
  end

  def not_found
      # next 2 lines is a temp solution--- >
      raise ActionController::RoutingError.new('User Not Found')
      return

      # --- > this below fails results in endless loop
      if Rails.env == "development"
        redirect_to "http://default.domain.dev:3000"
        return
      else
        redirect_to "http://default.domain.com"
      end
    end
end

Answer 1

Not sure there is going to be a particularly nice way to do this and it’s not easy to make a proper judgement here without seeing the bigger picture, but, maybe you should store the default domain as a constant somewhere and then check this before redirecting, to break the loop, as it were!

Something like this would be better;

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protect_from_forgery

  layout "application"
  before_filter :account

  def account
    @user = User.where(:subdomain => request.subdomain).first

    if @user.nil? and DEFAULT_URL =~ request.subdomain
      port = request.server_port == 80 ? '' : ":#{request.server_port}"
      redirect_to "http://#{DEFAULT_URL}#{port}"
    end
  end

end

You get the general idea, you could set DEFAULT_URL in an initializer..