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ruby-on-railspreferences

Best approach to save user preferences?

I have seen two different approaches in saving user preferences.

APPROACH 1: Serializing them and saving in one of the column of USERS table

APPROACH 2: Creating a separate table PREFERENCES and make a has_many association from USERS to PREFERENCES.

Which one of the above two approaches would you prefer and what are the pros and cons of each over other?

Solution

  • It's usually a good idea to favor normalization. The second solution keeps your models cleaner, allows for easy extensibility if new preferences are added, and keeps your tables uncluttered.