Multi-user multi-company design

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am working on a site which tracks "ferms" (read: widgets)... each ferm belongs to one company, one company can have many ferms.

One company can also have many users with different access priveliges, and company administrators would invite other users to access the company's site.

Also, one user can belong to different companies and perhaps have different access at each company.

I'm struggling to determine how to nest the models, here is my best guess:

User   has_many :companies, :through => :companies_users end

Company   has_many :ferms   has_many :users, :through => :companies_users end

The companies_users join table would have a column that describes the access (1,2,3?) for that user at that company.

When a user logs in and wants to view his list of ferms at Company X the Ferms#index controller would include

@ferms = Ferm.find(:all, :conditions => ["company = ?", User.company])

Am I on the right track with this? Any help is appreciated.

SH

2

I am working on a site which tracks "ferms" (read: widgets)... each ferm belongs to one company, one company can have many ferms.

One company can also have many users with different access priveliges, and company administrators would invite other users to access the company's site.

Also, one user can belong to different companies and perhaps have different access at each company.

I'm struggling to determine how to nest the models, here is my best guess:

User has_many :companies, :through => :companies_users end

Company has_many :ferms has_many :users, :through => :companies_users end

You sought of want nested has_many :throughs, at which point it would
become obvious. Rails doesn't have that baked in, but there is a plugin (just google
for nested has_many through)

Fred