Question

I am creating an aplication where users can be of two types: a patient or a doctor. Each type has its own set of attributes.

Is it possible to create a User model that contains the shared attributes, and then create a Patient and Doctor models that inherit from User ?

Answer 1

No, but you can do what you said, and then for each subclass add an association to a model that contains the specific attributes. Then you can use delegate to make things seem seamless.

class User
end

class Doctor < User
  has_one :doctor_profile
  delegate :phd_in, :to => :doctor_profile
end

class Patient < User
  has_one :patient_profile
  delegate :symptoms, :to => :patient_profile
end

class DoctorProfile
  # E.g. attributes: phd_in:string
end

class PatientProfile
  # E.g. attributes: symptoms:text
end