Question

I have a rails application with 2 roles, say admin and user. But the thing is, The admin doesn’t use a backend like ActiveAdmin for example. I want both Admin and User to see the same views, but depending on the role, I restrict what they can see. I’m using Cancan, but since for example both admin and user can see the product page, I end up with many conditions inside the view and controller actions stating for example if this is an admin show that, if not then show that instead.

So I don’t really think that this is the “Rails way”. I end up with many repeated code, and code inside the views which doesn’t really support the idea of keeping the logic away from the views.

So my question is, What’s the best way to implement such a scenario with many roles but the same views.

Thank you.

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I’m thinking of two options currently, but I don’t like either. One is to redirect the admin to another view, but this way most of the view is the same hence it’s not DRY at all.
Option 2 is to use the exact same view, but add many conditions in the view, so I end up with a huge complex view with code. I’m trying to find a way that keeps things DRY yet simple, and keeps the views code free.

Answer 1

You can have the admin module under seperate namespace and users as the default namespace. You can extract the common code under partials and use the same in both admin and user module.

This way you can separate the code for user and admin, and if sometime in future if you decide to go for a different views for admin and user. It won;t be much of a task.

1. Have controllers as

   app/controllers/admin/articles —— for admin users

   app/controllers/articles —- for normal users

and

1. views

   app/views/admin/articles

   app/views/articles

   app/views/shared