Question

I’m making an app in Ruby on Rails 3.1.3. I have different types of users (i.e. admin, operator, advertiser, etc…), and each has a different main (or home) page. I want to make a route helper that will give me the respective route for the home page of the current logged in user by using something like home_path. This is mainly for redirecting after certain actions (I want to redirect back to the respective home pages depending on the type of user).

I already have some methods available such as current_user (returns the current logged in user), current_user.admin? (returns true if the current logged in user is admin), current_user.operator?, etc.

Right now I’m using a helper method to do this, but it doesn’t seem like a very Rails way to do it. The code follows anyway:

def home_path(params = {})
    user = current_user
    case user
        when user.admin?
            params = {:controller => 'administrators', :action => 'index'}.merge(params)
        when user.advertiser?
            params = {:controller => 'advertisers', :action => 'show', :id => user.advertiser_id}.merge(params)
        when user.operator?
            params = {:controller => 'callcenter', :action => 'index'}.merge(params)
        else
            params = {:controller => 'posts', :action => 'home'}.merge(params)
    end
    url_for(params)
end

I figure this should be done with constrained routes, but I still don’t get how it could be done to depend on the .admin?, .operator?, etc. methods. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Using a helper method is fine for this. It should probably end up in your controller, rather than a view helper, though, which gives it access to the current_user. With some cleanup, you can arrive at something that ain’t half bad with the same idea you have now.

module DefaultHomeHelper
  DEFAULT_PARAMS = { controller: :posts, action: :home }.freeze
  ROLE_SPECIFIC_PARAMS = {
    admin: { controller: :administrators, action: :index },
    advertiser: { controller: :advertisers, action: :show },
    operator: { controller: :callcenter, :action: :index }
  }.freeze

  def home_path(params = {})
    url_for params.reverse_merge(ROLE_SPECIFIC_PARAMS[current_user.role] || DEFAULT_PARAMS)
  end
end

I’ve made the assumption you can be more direct and ask your User object to just tell you its role instead of guessing one after the other. You will almost certainly need to tweak the code to accomodate whatever you’re calling this on your user. I’ve also used the newer hash syntax, but if you’re running or accommodating Ruby < 1.9 you will need to update. I’ve used symbols for the actions and controller names, too, because I like referring to objects and methods with symbols instead of strings (and controllers and actions are objects and methods).

You could do a simple include DefaultHomeHelper in your ApplicationController to use this. You can also make it available to your views with helper_method :home_path.