Question

I’m building an app that provides functionality for both consumers and businesses. In creating my models, I’m thinking of having user (consumer) and business…where each business would also have user(s), but users wouldn’t necessarily belong to a business. To reduce redundancy I’d collect name, email, etc in User and specific business info (address, phone) in Business.

class Business < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :user  
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_one :business #only if business user, not consumer
end

Is this the correct way to configure the desired relationship?

Then when it comes time for business registration, is it possible (and how) to have nested forms where my business object is first, then user…so I’m collecting information in that order? All examples/info I’ve found shows the setup with user info captured first, then any sub-models.

In my following example, would this be correct:

<%= form_for(@business) do |f| %>
  #grab business info
<%= f.fields_for :user do |ff| %>
 #grab user info

Thanks for your time and assistance.

Answer 1

You will need to have

 class Business < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user  
 end

 class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :business #only if business user, not consumer
  attr_accessible :business_attributes
  accepts_nested_attributes_for :business
 end

and form should be

 <%= form_for(@user) do |f| %>
  #grab user info
 <%= f.fields_for :business_attributes do |ff| %>
  #grab business info

then use update_attributes in update method to update user