Newbie Associations Design Question

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello

I am new to rails and have a design issue. Although I have a proposed solution I am far from sure how robust it is. I would appreciate any feedback.

My application is team based: - A user can only be in one team - Team members(user) cannot view/edit another team's content

Team A -User -Widget --Part

Team B -User -Widget --Part

I need to: - identify the team from the user - create members for a team

So everything is simple - just create a User model that belongs_to the Team (has_many users). Except I need admin users to manage the teams. My problem is how best to manage this?

I think I need a User model and a Member model. The user handles authentication, a user without a member association is an admin and the member belongs to the Team. Perhaps something like this:

Team has_many :members

Member belongs_to :team has_one :user attr :team_role

User belongs_to: member authenticates! attr :admin_role

However, this doesn't seem correct because the User still belongs to Team. I am sure that at least the relationship between user & member is incorrect. Can you suggest a better (more conventional) solution?

Many Thanks Polly

2

Keep it simple, just have one user table with a flag to say whether it is an admin user or not. This would also allow an admin user to be a member of a team. You could look at the cancan gem which will handle multiple roles but that is probably overkill for this case.

A question, can a user be in more than one team? If so then you will need a different setup.

Colin

3

Hello Colin

Thanks for your response.

A user can only belong to one team. Admins will never belong to a team.

So, if I understand you correctly:

Team has_many :users

User belongs_to :team attr :admin (bool)

I am concerned that an admin will have no team but the model "belongs_to" a team. It just doesn't feel right. It will require many "if" statements (in controllers?) which I understand (but could be wrong) isn't very mvc/oo.

4

Could you not top post please? Insert your reply inline in previous message, it makes it easier to follow the thread. Thanks.

Hello Colin

Thanks for your response.

A user can only belong to one team. Admins will never belong to a team.

OK, that is significant.

So, if I understand you correctly:

Team has_many :users

User belongs_to :team attr :admin (bool)

I am concerned that an admin will have no team but the model "belongs_to" a team. It just doesn't feel right. It will require many "if" statements (in controllers?) which I understand (but could be wrong) isn't very mvc/oo.

Some questions. I presume that admin users will login to the application. Is that also true of members, or are they just data within the app? Also do members and users have attributes in common such as name, email etc? If members do login then what can they do?

Colin

5

Hello Colin

Thanks again. Here are my answers.

Admin users log in to manage the Teams and Team Members

Team Members are real people who log in to view and manage data that belongs to their Team. [Team data is private - it can only be viewed and managed by team members. All teams will build data using the same (deeply nested) models.]

The only attributes shared by Admin & Members are those required for authorisation/authentication.

Polly

6

Let me try to describe it clearly in one post:

* AdminUsers only manage the Team & Member objects. * Members build Team data by managing all objects under Team (Thing, Widget, Part). * Team data is private to Team Members.

7

You obviously missed my request to not top post, so that it is easier to follow the thread.

Let me try to describe it clearly in one post:

* AdminUsers only manage the Team & Member objects. * Members build Team data by managing all objects under Team (Thing, Widget, Part). * Team data is private to Team Members.

**********************************************

AdminUser

Team A -MemberUser -Thing --Widget ---Part

Team B -MemberUser -Thing --Widget ---Part

Since they both have to be authenticated then obviously there has to be at least a common table for the authentication data.

Basically then you need to allow one sort of user to access certain controllers and methods and another sort of user to access a different set of controller methods. You can put this in the before filter where you do the authentication check. As well as checking that a user is logged in, check that it is the right sort of user. Probably the only place you need to check is in the before filters.

Colin

8

Colin Law wrote in post #1108653:

9

I think that is the way I would do it. By mentioning the before_filters I was pointing out there should be very few places where you should have to test.

I mentioned the cancan gem earlier, I suggest you also have a look at that, it may be a bit of overkill but it is still worth looking at to see what it can do for you.

Colin