I am designing an app where the user signs up using the devise gem (email + password).
Then, i have a form to capture other personal information and since i am creating something like a social dating app i need to match users using this data.
My question is based on a design concern because I created a Model with devise and then I am using a different database to hold the data coming from the form after sign up.
Do you suggest having a mutual column between Model from Devise and the new Database, maybe Id or email since they are both unique
OR
Ask for this information in the sign up for by overwrite devise using a custom controller?
What is considered best practise? Keep in mind that I have two types of users, it is not males/females, it is something else, therefore Maybe two databases are helpful having another one from devise so in total 3.
I think the best way to go would be to keep the Devise model for the users and then create another model (for example "Profile"), where you can store all the more "personal" data for each user.
Then you can either ask for the user to fill that data through a new form, or you can create nested fields in the sign up form where the user can fill some information right away.
Related
I'm fairly new to rails. I'm having problem on designing the model classes. So this app will be used by 5 different users(Students, Teachers, Head and Coordinator). They each are different users to login into the website and have different functionality (example: Head makes an event. Students register for an event. Coordinator sets who can be head etc). I have created all four models with USERNAME and PASSWORD on each models.I don't have user model right now because the users in this app are these 4 models. Now, while making login page, i'm having hard time on implementing the best way to authenticate the users. For example, If a Head puts its login credentials, the app should identify that user that logged in is Head. What approach will be best to encounter this?
Also, after not figuring out the way to approach this. I was thinking of using devise and CanCanCan gem. But the same promblem comes in even if i use this gems.(i maybe wrong)
Do not create multiple models for different kinds of users. This is almost always not what you want. Instead add a column called role of the type enum which contains all of the kinds of roles you want to add like Sergio pointed out. Your comment about having too many attributes on one model is a non issue compared to the one you are planning to create with 5 user models.
It sounds like you are possible putting too much data on the user model if that is your concern
and have different functionality (example: Head makes an event. Students register for an event.
For this you want a permissions system such as cancancan where you can specify which features of the website each role has access to.
I'm looking for a way to allow private registrations, or registrations that require manual approval. The latter can be done using the strategy as described here, but I figure the former method might be more convenient if I could somehow take advantage of the password reset module to simplify the process (send an email with a one-time use token but for the purpose of account creation). Has anyone attempted anything like this, or possibly have a better strategy that makes greater use of existing components in devise?
possibly related: Ruby on rails: Devise, want to add invite code?
I have to admit I am not a big fan of using features in a framework that are designed for other uses to accomplish some other goal.
What I usually do when I want a private Sign-Up where you have to be invited to the App is to simply put the user creation/registration inside the Application. After all Devise is just an authentication mechanism ontop of the User model.
So in my current app for example there is a explicit way inside the app for existing users to invite a friend.
The inviting User has a form that creates an entry in the Users table for the new guy with his email address and a field that tells me if the user has finished his registration. I create a little Token that also gets saved to the Database (SecureRandom.hex(8) is a nice way to create such Tokens).
The system shoots the new guy a email telling him where to sign up (with a URL that contains the token), and the sign up is just a form that sets password and additional fields.
All of this is no real magic in Rails, it's all in all 2 controller actions, 2 views and 1 mailer to accomplish it and you are in no way constrained by any API Devise is or is not giving you.
I only had to make sure Devise won't authenticate Users that have not yet redeemed their invitation token but that's it then.
Sure not having to write the sign up view is convenient, but especially when you are dealing with partial information (the inviting User in my case has to fill in some information about the new user already) that gets only complemented by the new user it's quite convenient to just have regular forms where you can do anything with them.
Unless someone writes a Gem that extends Devise to do exactly this, I think I'll stick to this approach.
Turns out there was a third strategy - I could simply lock new accounts (lockable, before_create filter) and provide a manual unlock facility.
I really like how devise offers an easy to use registration system out of the box but I'm having trouble extending it to do what I need. I need to create a public user profile for each user that shows their information like name, email, bio, and more info. I've done this in the past before with a users/show function but since devise doesn't provide any easily editable controllers, I'm having trouble figuring out how to do this. I've already run rails generate devise:views to copy the devise views to my app but I don't know where to go from here. Any help would be much appreciated.
Sounds like you want users to update their profile at the same time they create their account? If so, you can setup an associated Profile model with the User model. Using accepts_nested_attributes_for you can then create a record for the nested model on devise user registration submit/creation.
Here's a great screencast covering nested models and I also suggest you search other devise relate SO posts as this question has been discussed before.
There is an alternative approach, that is simpler to implement — only allow registered users edit/update their profile. This way you don't have to alter the Devise views and you can setup the various CRUD actions via a separate non-devise controller.
Throw in an Access Control List (ACL) solution such as CanCan (there are other alternatives too!) and you can even allow other users view profiles but deny access to edit/destroy etc.
I'm writing a trading system and I have 3 models/roles: Buyers, Sellers and Administrators. I have generated the devise views for each of the models but I would like to use the same sign in, forgotten password pages etc. for them, rather than maintaining 3 sets of views, is there a way of doing this?
The buyer and seller have similar fields (forename, surname, email address, telephone etc.), is it possible to use STI with devise and is it fairly straightforward? At the moment I have 3 separate models with no inheritance.
You can simply have a single User model with a :role attribute and also implement a simple ACL via CanCan or decl_auth (gems). This way they will all sign in etc. via the same session. Devise and CanCan is quite a popular approach and well documented online and in their respective Github wiki's.
For administrators, you can modify your validations to skip on the extra attributes and leave them as blank in the DB.
I have seen lots of similar questions here but nothing that quite fits my need.
I am a pretty experience rails developer but this new project is my first time using both Rails 3 and Devise (I'm normally on authlogic).
My app has two different models that I want to authenticate via devise.
One, User is just a standard users model
Two, Business is similar to a user, (it has an email address column too) but it has additional info in the database (address, phone number, etc..)
I want to be able to log them both in via the same login form. Then obviously once they are logged in they will be presented with different info depending on what type of Model has logged in.
It may or may not be relevant that I was planning on using OmniAuth to allow Users (though probably not businesses) to sign up/on via facebook.
Thanks!
What's the easiest way to go about doing this?
I think the only way to handle this would be to have your own custom sign in form and controller that determined the type of user and then sign them in correctly. I would recommend an approach like what mark mentioned for simplicity (take a look at something like CanCan to manage roles).
Another potential problem with having multiple user models is that you will have multiple versions of all the devise helper methods. So for current_<resource> and <resource>_signed_in? you would have current_user, current_business_user, user_signed_in? and business_user_signed_in?. Then you would either have to implement your own versions of these methods or you would need to check both versions everywhere you used them.
Can do this in application_controller?
current_user = current_resource_a || current_resource_b