How do I create multiple views for different users by role?

Question

I have a User that can have multiple roles player, coach, guest.

I want to have different views of a player_profile (profile/8) depending on the user that is logged in or viewing that profile.

Aside from writing a bunch of if statements in my views to detect cancancan permissions, is there a simpler/more sane way to tackle this in as DRY as fashion as possible?

Answer 1

To display different views based on user role, you can employ some simple branching logic in the controller. Let's take the show action as an example:

def show
  if current_user.role == 'admin'
    render 'show_admin'
  else
    render 'show'
  end
end

This example assumes that you have access to a current_user helper, either from something like Devise or your own solution, a show_admin.html.erb file, a show.html.erb file and a role attribute on your User model.

There isn't really that much to it.