Rails: Using Devise with single table inheritance - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am having a problem getting Devise to work the way I'd like with single table inheritance.
I have two different types of account organised as follows:
class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable
end
class User < Account
end
class Company < Account
end
I have the following routes:
devise_for :account, :user, :company
Users register at /user/sign_up and companies register at /company/sign_up. All users log in using a single form at /account/sign_in (Account is the parent class).
However, logging in via this form only seems to authenticate them for the Account scope. Subsequent requests to actions such as /user/edit or /company/edit direct the user to the login screen for the corresponding scope.
How can I get Devise to recognise the account 'type' and authenticate them for the relevant scope?
Any suggestions much appreciated.

Answer 1

There is an easy way to handle STI in the routes.
Let's say you have the following STI models:
def Account < ActiveRecord::Base
# put the devise stuff here
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
end
def User < Account
end
def Company < Account
A method that is often overlooked is that you can specify a block in the authenticated method in your routes.rb file:
## config/routes.rb
devise_for :accounts, :skip => :registrations
devise_for :users, :companies, :skip => :sessions
# routes for all users
authenticated :account do
end
# routes only for users
authenticated :user, lambda {|u| u.type == "User"} do
end
# routes only for companies
authenticated :user, lambda {|u| u.type == "Company"} do
end
To get the various helper methods like "current_user" and "authenticate_user!" ("current_account" and "authenticate_account!" are already defined) without having to define a separate method for each (which quickly becomes unmaintainable as more user types are added), you can define dynamic helper methods in your ApplicationController:
## controllers/application_controller.rb
def ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
%w(User Company).each do |k|
define_method "current_#{k.underscore}" do
current_account if current_account.is_a?(k.constantize)
end
define_method "authenticate_#{k.underscore}!" do
|opts={}| send("current_#{k.underscore}") || not_authorized
end
end
end
This is how I solved the rails devise STI problem.

Answer 2

I just ran into the exact scenario (with class names changed) as outlined in the question. Here's my solution (Devise 2.2.3, Rails 3.2.13):
in config/routes.rb:
devise_for :accounts, :controllers => { :sessions => 'sessions' }, :skip => :registrations
devise_for :users, :companies, :skip => :sessions
in app/controllers/sessions_controller.rb:
class SessionsController < Devise::SessionsController
def create
rtn = super
sign_in(resource.type.underscore, resource.type.constantize.send(:find, resource.id)) unless resource.type.nil?
rtn
end
end
Note: since your Accounts class will still be :registerable the default links in views/devise/shared/_links.erb will try to be emitted, but new_registration_path(Accounts) won't work (we :skip it in the route drawing) and cause an error. You'll have to generate the devise views and manually remove it.
Hat-tip to https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/plataformatec-devise/s4Gg3BjhG0E for pointing me in the right direction.

Answer 3

try to change routes like so:
devise_for :accounts, :users, :companies
because Devise uses plural names for it's resources
Please let me know if it help you

Answer 4

I don't think this is possible without overriding the sessions controller. Each sign_in page has a specific scope that devise will authenticate against as defined by your routes.
It may be possible to use the same sign_in page for multiple user scopes by using the devise_scope function in your routes file to force both :users and :companies to use the same sign in page (a how-to can be found here), but I'm pretty certain that you would have to modify your sessions controller to do some custom logic in order to determine which type of user is signing in.