Authentication for 2 models

rubyonrails-talk
1

I've got 2 models: School and Student

I'm using restful authentication for school so when someone signs up they are routed to schools/new The schools table has info for an admin, but I also need authentication for students. Here is what I was thinking would be the best way to do this:

#1 Combine admin and students into User model and have an admin? boolean column. So schools would be info about the school, with no admin info.

#2 When logging in, if the user is a student they would check the student checkbox so the query can be against students, rather than schools. I believe this is basically like having 2 authentication systems which seems kind of complicated.

Which way would you guys do this?

2

Here’s an approach I’ve used before… you have a user model and a role model and then you link the two.

class Role < ActiveRecord::Base has_and_belongs_to_many :users end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

has_and_belongs_to_many :roles

def has_role(role) self.roles.detect(|r| r.name == role} end

def is_student? self.has_role?(“student”)

end

def is_admin? self.has_role?(“admin”) end

end

Role.create :name=>“admin” Role.create :name=>“student”

user = User.create :last_name=>“Simpson”, :first_name=>“Homer”, :password=>“1234”, :password_confirmation=>“1234”, :email=>" homer@simpsons.com", :login=>“homer”

user.roles << Role.find_by_name “admin” user.roles << Role.find_by_name “student”

Makes it really easy then, cos in your views, if you use restful_auth or acts_as_authenticated, your current_user will have a .is_admin? on it.

<% if current_user.is_admin? %> … show stuff for admins

<% end %>

Hope that helps.

-Brian

3

I'll give this a try, thanks a lot!