Question

I’m currently building a rails application that contains 3 user types. This is my first experience with web development, and I would like to avoid making crucial design errors that will cost me later on. Hopefully more experienced rails users and web developers will be able to guide me in the right direction.

I want to use Devise as my primary authentication system, and I am currently planning something like this in order to support 3 user-types within the Devise framework:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
         :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable

  attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me

  belongs_to :rolable, :polymorphic => true
end

For each of the three user-types:

# usertype1.rb
class UserType1 < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end

# usertype2.rb
class UserType2 < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end

Essentially, there is a polymorphic association between the user class and the several different user types. My hope is that this approach will allow me to eventually add different associative keywords within the user-type models (such as has-many) that will allow convenient querying of the database.

I’m also concerned about how to implement user-dependent routing. The idea is that each user-type will see a separate “hub” when they log-in, with different dashboards, different actions, etc. I was thinking that I would approach this by overriding the Devise SessionsController. Something like this:

class SessionsController < ApplicationController
    def new
    end

    def create
      user = User.find_by_email(params[:email])
      if user && user.authenticate(params[:password])
        session[:user_id] = user.id
        if user.type == 1
            redirect_to hub_typeone
        else if user.type == 2
            redirect_to hub_typetwo
        else
            redirect_to hub_typethree
      else
        flash.now.alert = "Email or password is invalid"
        render "new"
      end
    end

    def destroy
      session[:user_id] = nil
      redirect_to root_url, notice: "Logged out!"
    end
end

The idea is that upon successful authentication, the user is routed to a different page based on user type. I’m planning on using the devise current_user framework to then query the database to populate the hubs with the user-specific data.

Do you guys have any pointers for me? Do you see any huge flaws in my plans/reasoning/approach? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I get a feeling you are over-engineering this, and building something You Aren’t Gonna Need It

It’s best if you are clear about what the three different user types are. Most applications would require the following three user types:

1. Guest users, who aren’t logged in, and can access some part of the application
2. Regular users
3. Admin users who administer the rights of regular users.

I am curious to know what other user types you would need if they are not in this list.

Devise wikipages has suggestions on how to create a guest user, and how to add an admin role. Probably best to start by implementing the functionality of the regular users of your application, and then use the above mentioned resources to add other user types.