Question

need some advice.
I’m doing a project on RoR, and do not sure what relationship between the models should I use. I’ve got three models – Users, Boards and Messages.
The beginning is pretty simple:
User has one Wall, and it belongs to the User, so I guess this should be:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :board
end

class Board < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :user
end

The last model is Messages and here comes my problem. Message belongs to User cause he writes it, but it also belongs to a Wall cause he writes it on a wall (and it can be Wall that belongs to other user).

I used the simple solution:

class Theme < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :board
    belongs_to :user
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
      has_one :board
      has_many :themes
end

class Board < ActiveRecord::Base
      belongs_to :user
      has_many :themes
end

But I not satisfy with it, and feel that it isn’t perfect. I’m looking for a solution that will let me write thinks like:

user.themes.create(:board => @board)

(now it doesn’t fill user_id field)

I hope that isn’t a hard task for those who more experienced than me in Ruby on Rails model. I’ll appreciate good advices, thanks.

Answer 1

For normal you use some authentification gem like devise. Then you have the current_user variable which includes the object of the user that is currently calling the action.

Then when a user creates the Topic you add one simple line to the controller to set the user:

@theme.user = current_user

You should also use a gem like cancan to manage the authorisation in a cenral file. Youl find a railscast here:

http://railscasts.com/episodes/192-authorization-with-cancan