Question

How can I make it so that an organization is only created if the user is NOT signed in?

That’s a little vague, so let me make that a little clearer. I have two tables; one organization table, and another user table. Organizations has many users, and users belong to an organization.

# models/organizations.rb

class Organization < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :users

I made it so that when a user signs up, an organization is created along with his account.

# models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :organization
    before_create :create_organization

  private

  def create_organization
    self.organization = Organization.create :name => self.name
  end

Cool, that works.

But users should also be able to sign other people up for an account, and that new user’s organization_id should be the same as current_user.organization_id

*# controllers/users_controller.rb*

  def create
    @user = User.new(params[:user])
    if current_user
      @user.organization_id = current_user.organization_id
    end
  end

This solution is limiting me, because the model is creating an organization even if the user is already signed in. They work independently (if I take out either the before_filter in the model or the if current_user in the controller), but not together.

I’m having a difficult time making them work together because you can’t access current_user in the user model.

I’d put the organization_id as a paramater in the sign up link, but that’s not very secure as that means any user could simply change the organization_id in the URL and automatically get an account to another organization that doesn’t belong to them.

If it matters, I’m using Authlogic as my authentication solution.

Is there anything I can do in the user model or the user controller to accomplish this?

Answer 1

Just check if organization is present in the before_filter:

def create_organization
  self.organization = Organization.create(:name => self.name) unless self.organization.present?
end

If a user is signed in, the new user will be associated with an organization already and the before_filter will not create a new one.