First, I've searched intensely with Google and Yahoo and I've found several replies on topics like mine, but they all don't really cover what I need to know.
I've got several user models in my app, for now it's Customers, Designers, Retailers and it seems there are yet more to come. They all have different data stored in their tables and several areas on the site they're allowed to or not. So I figured to go the devise+CanCan way and to try my luck with polymorphic associations, so I got the following models setup:
class User < AR
belongs_to :loginable, :polymorphic => true
end
class Customer < AR
has_one :user, :as => :loginable
end
class Designer < AR
has_one :user, :as => :loginable
end
class Retailer < AR
has_one :user, :as => :loginable
end
For the registration I've got customized views for each different User type and my routes are setup like this:
devise_for :customers, :class_name => 'User'
devise_for :designers, :class_name => 'User'
devise_for :retailers, :class_name => 'User'
For now the registrations controller is left as standard (which is "devise/registrations"), but I figured, since I got different data to store in different models I'd have to customize this behaviour as well!?
But with this setup I got helpers like customer_signed_in? and designer_signed_in?, but what I'd really need is a general helper like user_signed_in? for the areas on the site that are accessible to all users, no matter which user type.
I'd also like a routes helper like new_user_session_path instead of the several new_*type*_session_path and so on. In fact all I need to be different is the registration process...
So I was wondering IF THIS IS THE WAY TO GO for this problem? Or is there a better/easier/less must-customize solution for this?
Okay, so I worked it through and came to the following solution.
I needed to costumize devise a little bit, but it's not that complicated.
The User model
# user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me
belongs_to :rolable, :polymorphic => true
end
The Customer model
# customer.rb
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end
The Designer model
# designer.rb
class Designer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end
So the User model has a simple polymorphic association, defining if it's a Customer or a Designer.
The next thing I had to do was to generate the devise views with rails g devise:views to be part of my application. Since I only needed the registration to be customized I kept the app/views/devise/registrations folder only and removed the rest.
Then I customized the registrations view for new registrations, which can be found in app/views/devise/registrations/new.html.erb after you generated them.
<h2>Sign up</h2>
<%
# customized code begin
params[:user][:user_type] ||= 'customer'
if ["customer", "designer"].include? params[:user][:user_type].downcase
child_class_name = params[:user][:user_type].downcase.camelize
user_type = params[:user][:user_type].downcase
else
child_class_name = "Customer"
user_type = "customer"
end
resource.rolable = child_class_name.constantize.new if resource.rolable.nil?
# customized code end
%>
<%= form_for(resource, :as => resource_name, :url => registration_path(resource_name)) do |f| %>
<%= my_devise_error_messages! # customized code %>
<div><%= f.label :email %><br />
<%= f.email_field :email %></div>
<div><%= f.label :password %><br />
<%= f.password_field :password %></div>
<div><%= f.label :password_confirmation %><br />
<%= f.password_field :password_confirmation %></div>
<% # customized code begin %>
<%= fields_for resource.rolable do |rf| %>
<% render :partial => "#{child_class_name.underscore}_fields", :locals => { :f => rf } %>
<% end %>
<%= hidden_field :user, :user_type, :value => user_type %>
<% # customized code end %>
<div><%= f.submit "Sign up" %></div>
<% end %>
<%= render :partial => "devise/shared/links" %>
For each User type I created a separate partial with the custom fields for that specific User type, i.e. Designer --> _designer_fields.html
<div><%= f.label :label_name %><br />
<%= f.text_field :label_name %></div>
Then I setup the routes for devise to use the custom controller on registrations
devise_for :users, :controllers => { :registrations => 'UserRegistrations' }
Then I generated a controller to handle the customized registration process, copied the original source code from the create method in the Devise::RegistrationsController and modified it to work my way (don't forget to move your view files to the appropriate folder, in my case app/views/user_registrations
class UserRegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
def create
build_resource
# customized code begin
# crate a new child instance depending on the given user type
child_class = params[:user][:user_type].camelize.constantize
resource.rolable = child_class.new(params[child_class.to_s.underscore.to_sym])
# first check if child instance is valid
# cause if so and the parent instance is valid as well
# it's all being saved at once
valid = resource.valid?
valid = resource.rolable.valid? && valid
# customized code end
if valid && resource.save # customized code
if resource.active_for_authentication?
set_flash_message :notice, :signed_up if is_navigational_format?
sign_in(resource_name, resource)
respond_with resource, :location => redirect_location(resource_name, resource)
else
set_flash_message :notice, :inactive_signed_up, :reason => inactive_reason(resource) if is_navigational_format?
expire_session_data_after_sign_in!
respond_with resource, :location => after_inactive_sign_up_path_for(resource)
end
else
clean_up_passwords(resource)
respond_with_navigational(resource) { render_with_scope :new }
end
end
end
What this all basically does is that the controller determines which user type must be created according to the user_type parameter that's delivered to the controller's create method by the hidden field in the view which uses the parameter by a simple GET-param in the URL.
For example:
If you go to /users/sign_up?user[user_type]=designer you can create a Designer.
If you go to /users/sign_up?user[user_type]=customer you can create a Customer.
The my_devise_error_messages! method is a helper method which also handles validation errors in the associative model, based on the original devise_error_messages! method
module ApplicationHelper
def my_devise_error_messages!
return "" if resource.errors.empty? && resource.rolable.errors.empty?
messages = rolable_messages = ""
if !resource.errors.empty?
messages = resource.errors.full_messages.map { |msg| content_tag(:li, msg) }.join
end
if !resource.rolable.errors.empty?
rolable_messages = resource.rolable.errors.full_messages.map { |msg| content_tag(:li, msg) }.join
end
messages = messages + rolable_messages
sentence = I18n.t("errors.messages.not_saved",
:count => resource.errors.count + resource.rolable.errors.count,
:resource => resource.class.model_name.human.downcase)
html = <<-HTML
<div id="error_explanation">
<h2>#{sentence}</h2>
<ul>#{messages}</ul>
</div>
HTML
html.html_safe
end
end
UPDATE:
To be able to support routes like /designer/sign_up and /customer/sign_up you can do the following in your routes file:
# routes.rb
match 'designer/sign_up' => 'user_registrations#new', :user => { :user_type => 'designer' }
match 'customer/sign_up' => 'user_registrations#new', :user => { :user_type => 'customer' }
Any parameter that's not used in the routes syntax internally gets passed to the params hash. So :user gets passed to the params hash.
So... that's it. With a little tweeking here and there I got it working in a quite general way, that's easily extensible with many other User models sharing a common User table.
Hope someone finds it useful.