Question

I have two models, user & offline_user, and
I want to use a dropdown select control such as a collection_select to choose an item from a combined list of the contents of both models.

How would I do this?

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They are quite similar, they both contain a first_name, last_name, email address and telephone field. However an email address is mandatory for the user model while it is not mandatory for the offline user model. I use devise for the user model authentication.

The reasoning behind this is as follows,

I use email address as the web application login but I also need to cater for customers who telephone the business and perhaps do not have an email address. So I want the admin to be able to create new users without requiring an email address.

The business will also have a list of existing customers who will not have been asked to provide an email address. I want to be able to import this list.

Perhaps I should be using just one model, but at the time it seemed best to keep them separate. Suggestions?

Answer 1

If you were to use the migration

create_table :users do |t|
  t.string :first_name
  t.string :last_name
  t.string :email
  t.string :phone
  t.boolean :offline
end

and then the model

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :email, :presence => true, :if => "offline == false"
end

This will allow you to have both types of users in one model, as well as ensuring that a normal user does have an e-mail address.

You could then use the normal User.all.select(:first_name) facilities to grab all the user names