Question

I have statements such as @user = User.find(current_user.id) throughout my application.

Sometimes a user might enter with a nil variable (such as a new user for whom current_user is nil).

I’m sure the dumb way to do this would be to scatter if statements everywhere like…

if current_user.exists?
  @user = User.find(current_user.id)
else
  redirect_to root_url
  ---*or*---
  @user = "new"   # for use with if/case statements later on
end

What is the elegant way to deal with this confusion?

Answer 1

@user = User.find(current_user.id) is a little unnecessary. Mostly because current_user is a User object already, so at the very least you should do @user = current_user, but I would recommend that if it isn’t already done by the authentication framework, I would add this to you application controller:

helper_method :current_user

That will make the current_user object available to your views and render the @user object unnecessary.

For handling redirects, I usually have this in my application controller:

before_filter :require_login

def require_login
   current_user || redirect_to(root_url)
end

And then in my controllers that don’t want to redirect:

skip_before_filter :require_login

Regarding setting the user to new, I wouldn’t do it. I generally like my User objects to be user objects. I would just test for a new user by if current_user where a nil current_user is the same as setting it to ‘new’.

I hope this helps