I'm trying to render simple check_boxes in a list of results so users can select on which of these results to get additional content for.
Example model setup (names changed):
UserRequest has_one :response
Response has_many :individual_results
IndividualResult has_one :contact_info
In the UserRequestsController I have a show action, which shows the user_request (duh), response, and its individual_results in a table.
The user should be able to select items (= contact_info) to request additional content for those. For some reason I don't manage to render the check_boxes after days of trying. Basically, I don't really understand where and how to store the array of selected contact_infos and how to pass it to the method that then gets the additional content.
My attempt was:
Create a ContactInfosController (didn't exist before, the user was only creating and showing her requests up to now, so contact_info was "model only" before)
Create a method request_content(contact_infos) (as post, to pass the user-selected contact_infos to. If I were to make it Restful, it would probably be "edit/update")
Add the form with check_boxes search_request#show
My search_request/show.html.erb:
<tbody>
<% if #response %>
<% form_for #contact_infos, url: contact_infos_request_content_path(#contact_infos) do |form| %>
<% #response.individual_results.each do |result| %>
# result.foo, ...
# result.contact_info.bar
<%= form.check_box "contact_info", "contact_info.request_content?", "true", "false %>
<% end %>
# form.submit
<% end %>
<% end %>
</tbody>
As it didn't work, I also had to declare the instance variable #contact_infos in RequestsController#show as #contact_infos = #response.individual_results.map { |r| r.contact_info }
Now, it fails at the check_box with "undefined method `merge'". Also, not sure how the params would be passed? I feel I went seriously "off the rails" and probably screwed up the design with this as it seems way too complicated...
Would anybody be so kind and help me get into the right direction, e.g., how would you pass the response to a method to request additional information? Read tons online but somehow couldn't apply it.
Thanks so much!
I'm looking for the cleanest way to handle a user permission. It would be used to define if a menu option can be displayed (menu is present in all views) and the access to a page.
So I was wondering which is the cleanest way to do it.
Set an instance variable in each action from the controller validating if the user had access
Add a method in the application helper validating each time it is call if the current user have access
You can define method in your ApplicationController who will check current user permissions. And you can use that method in before_action callback for those actions you need it.
I would recommend to look at cancancan gem (it's community driven support of cancan gem)
Using it it's easy to authorize actions and check abilities to decide show menu item or not.
You can also check out RailsCast about that subject to get understanding of whole idea.
Are you trying to implement an administrator or something similar? I think the cleanest way would be to just make a new column in the users table, which is initialized to false for most, but to true if the user is an admin (or something else). Then you can just make two partials to handle the two cases.
In that case, in your menu view (in your layout or whatnot) you would have this code or something similar:
<% if current_user.admin? %>
<%= render 'admin_page' %>
<% else %>
<%= render 'user_page' %>
<% end %>
Where I assume you define #current_user in your controller, or if you are using Devise, this is handled automatically.
Edit: Yes I endorse the earlier answer, CanCan is a good gem to handle these things also, you should consider using it. In such a case your code would look something like:
<% if can? :update, #user %>
# Edit something
<%= link_to edit_profile_path(#user), class: 'user' do %>
Edit your profile
<% end %>
<% end %>
I'm trying to hide parts of my views depending on the User role.
So let's say I want only admins to be able to destroy Products. Besides the code in the controller for preventing regular users from destroying records, I would do the following in the view:
<% if current_user.admin? %>
<%= link_to 'Delete', product, method: :delete %>
<% end %>
The previous code works, but it's prone to errors of omission, which may cause regular users to see links to actions they are not allowed to execute.
Also, if I decide later on that a new role (e.g. "moderator") can delete Products, I would have to find the views that display a delete link and add the logic allowing moderators to see it.
And if there are many models that can be deleted only by admin users (e.g. Promotion, User) maitenance of all the ifs would be pretty challenging.
Is there a better way of doing it? Maybe using helpers, or something similar? I'm looking for something maybe like this:
<%= destroy_link 'Delete', product %> # Only admins can see it
<%= edit_link 'Edit', promotion %> # Again, only admins see this link
<%= show_link 'Show', comment %> # Everyone sees this one
I found these two questions that are similar to mine, but none of them answered my question:
Show and hide based on user role in rails
Ruby on Rails (3) hiding parts of the view
I strongly recommend pundit.
It allows you to create "policies" for each model. For your Product model you might have a ProductPolicy that looks something like this
class ProductPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
def delete?
user.admin?
end
end
In your view you can do something like this
<% if policy(#post).delete? %>
<%= link_to 'Delete', product, method: :delete %>
<% end %>
If later on you want to add a moderator role, just modify the policy method
class ProductPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
def delete?
user.admin? || user.moderator?
end
end
So I kind of figured a way to move the IFs out of the view. First, I override the link_to helper in my application_helper.rb:
def link_to(text, path, options={})
super(text, path, options) unless options[:admin] and !current_user.admin?
end
Then on my views I use it as:
<%= link_to 'Edit Product', product, admin: true, ... %>
This prevents regular users from seeing admin links, but for other html tags with content inside, such as divs, tables etc., an if would still be needed.
CanCan is another gem that lets you define "Abilities" per user role.
In views you can use something like if can? :delete, #post to check if the
user may delete that specific post.
Using the CanCan and Role gems, what is still needed is a way to Check The Route and see if "current_user" has permissions to access that Route based on their role(s) - then show/hide based on that.
This saves the user clicking on things and getting told they cannot see it - or us having to write per-item "if" logic specifying what roles can see what list-items (which the customer will change periodically, as roles are changed/refined) around every single link in one's menu (consider a bootstrap menu with 50+ items nested in groups with html formatting, etc), which is insane.
If we must put if-logic around each menu-item, let's use the exact same logic for every item by checking the role/permissions we already defined in the Ability file.
But in our menu-list, we have route-helpers - not "controller/method" info, so how to test the user's ability to hit the controller-action specified for the "path" in each link?
To get the controller and method (action) of a path (my examples use the 'users_path' route-helper) ...
Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(app.users_path)
=> {:controller=>"users", :action=>"index"}
Get just the controller-name
Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(app.users_path)[:controller]
=> "users"
Ability uses the Model for its breakdown, so convert from controller name to it's model (assuming default naming used) ...
Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(app.users_path)[:controller].classify
=> "User"
Get just the action-name
Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(app.users_path)[:action]
=> "index"
And since the "can?" method needs a Symbol for the action, and Constant for the model, for each menu-item we get this:
path_hash = Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(app.users_path)
model = path_hash[:controller].classify.constantize
action = path_hash[:action].to_sym
Then use our existing Abilty system to check if the current_user can access it, we have to pass the action as a symbol and the Model as a constant, so ...
<% if can? action model %>
<%= link_to "Users List", users_path %>
<% end %>
Now we can change who can see this resource and link from the Ability file, without ever messing with the menu, again. But to make this a bit cleaner, I extracted out the lookup for each menu-item with this in the app-controller:
def get_path_parts(path)
path_hash = Rails.application.routes.recognize_path(path)
model_name = path_hash[:controller].classify.constantize
action_name = path_hash[:action].to_sym
return [model_name, action_name]
end
helper_method :get_path_parts
... so I could do this in the view (I took out all the html-formatting from the links for simplicity, here):
<% path_parts = get_path_parts(users_path); if can?(path_parts[1], path_parts[0]) %>
<%= link_to "Users Listing", users_path %>
<% end %>
... and to make this not take all day typing these per-menu-item if-wraps, I used regex find/replace with capture and wildcards to wrap this around every list-item in the menu-item listing in one pass.
It's far from ideal, and I could do a lot more to make it much better, but I don't have spare-time to write the rest of this missing-piece of the Role/CanCan system. I hope this part helps someone out.
I am working on an application that involves "follow/unfollow" functionality. Users can follow Objects and Objects can have many Users following them. It's a has_many :through relationship via a Relationships model/controller.
I have the following snippet in the object#show view:
<% if current_user.following?(#object) %>
<%= render 'unfollow' %>
<% else %>
<%= render 'follow' %>
<% end %>
When testing various functionalities in a request spec, it shows undefined method 'following?' for nil:NilClass and fails all of the object#show specs.
The following? method is in the User model and looks like this:
def following?(object)
relationships.find_by_object_id(object.id)
end
The method following? is in the User model (since they are the only ones doing following and unfollowing). I thought you could use methods between objects in Ruby, but perhaps not. If not, how would I go about refactoring this to be able to use that method?
Thanks in advance for any help!
There is no current_user helper in specs. That's why you get nil.
You should stab test user into current_user variable
So lets say we have a Post model, a User model and a View model.
When a user views a post, a new record is created in the Views table. The table links the user, the post, and the current time. Later if that user goes back to view the post again, the record is updated with a new time. Pretty basic stuff.
Posts has_many views, and Users has_many views
Views belongs to Posts and Users
In the index view of the Posts, I want to call the specific view for each post i.e.
<% #Posts.each do |post| %>
<%= post.name %><br/>
<%= post.views %> # This connects all of the views related to this post.
# How do I get the only one connected to this post and the current_user.id?
<% end %>
I feel like theres some simple way of accomplishing this that I'm totally forgetting
You could do something like
current_user.views.where(:post_id => post.id)
# this may work, not sure
current_user.views.where(:post => post)
or
post.views.where(:user_id => current_user.id)
# this may work, not sure
post.views.where(:user => current_user)