rails 4 and thoughtbot/clearance - adding fields to the user model

Question

I am a relative newbie so would really appreciate any assistance.

I'm using Rails 4.2, with the Clearance gem for authentication. I'm hoping someone could describe the best practise for over-riding the controllers to include custom attributes on the sign_up form.

I've read a lot of suggestions with varied advice, many of which are from previous versions of rails that do not use strong_parameters.

If anyone could provide a brief breakdown of the methods I need to be over-riding (user_params/user_from_params/etc) I would be most grateful. I can get things functioning by defining a new 'new' method that just includes @user = User.new, and the a new 'user_params' method using .permit, but I'm concerned about the default code I'm bypassing in user_from_params.

Any advice on best practise here would be fantastic!

Thanks

Answer 1

I'm working when I have time on updating the docs for Clearance, but right now the simplest thing to do is to inspect the Clearance users controller to see the various methods that can be overridden.

The default implementation of user_from_params is a bit odd now because Clearance 1.x still supports Rails 3.x, so it was written for a time when we used attr_accessible rather than strong parameters.

I'd probably do something like:

def user_params
  # Use strong params to do what you need
end

def user_from_params
  User.new(user_params)
end

You may need to massage user_params a bit so that whatever you do there is still valid for the new action, as user_from_params is still used there. I've opened an issue in Clearance to see if we can improve that aspect before 2.0.