Newbie question - how set up working with a subset of data (e.g. user's data)?

I'm new to rails & am building out an application to learn from. From a conceptual perspective, how would I go about working with a subset of data? For example, say I have an application with basic CRUD operations on "Stuff". I've implemented the restful_authentication plugin and am now struggling with how would I deal with setting up CRUD for "MyStuff" (i.e. Stuff associated with a particular user ID). What's the best approach? Any good examples/tutorials out there?

Following are thoughts I'm considering:

- Recreate the controller & views for "Stuff", but just using the subset of data associated with the user's ID.     - as a subset to this, I see the "Stuff" controller is "class StuffController < ApplicationController". Do I want to set        up something like "class MyStuffController < Stuff Controller". Is this possible?

- I've read on various the web pages about filtering, but not sure I understand it fully. Can this be used?     Really I'm just working with a subset of "Stuff", and I'd think I should be able to re-use the controller, views, etc.     by just passing it a different data set, but then maybe this is a naive perspective.

- Is this an inheritance concept?

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

Stuff has_many my_stuff

Then any individual Stuff will expose .my_stuff method. You will have to create the CRUD operations for the MyStuff, that will contain stuff_id field for the association.

Stuff has_many my_stuff

So in the model of "Stuff" declare that Stuff has_many my_stuff. The goal of this is to reuse the data in the Stuff table based on a user ID, not set up a separate table, yes?

Then any individual Stuff will expose .my_stuff method. You will have to create the CRUD operations for the MyStuff, that will contain stuff_id field for the association.

I create the CRUD for "MyStuff" w/ the user ID & stuff ID (versus just the stuff ID in the "Stuff" CRUDs). Do I need a new controller for "MyStuff"?

Let me get this straight. You have users. Users have Stuff. You want a page, say, where a given user can see just their Stuff, and nobody else’s?

Well, you’d want to make your User have_many :stuffs, and your Stuffs belong_to :user . This’ll require a user_id column in your Stuffs table.

Then, finding the Stuff for a certain user is as easy as “User.find(id).stuffs” . I forget if restful_authentication has a current_user helper, I use AuthLogic, and so I’d just say “current_user.stuffs”

But you probably don’t want to make a whole second set of controllers just for “MyStuffs”, unless some stuffs don’t belong to a user, but they can still modify them. It’s hard to understand the relationship with such generic terms.

If all stuffs belong to a user, then you probably want to make Stuffs a nested resouce of users. See the Railscast on the topic, it might be what you’re looking for.

http://railscasts.com/episodes/139-nested-resources

OK! Removed restful_authentication & installed/integrated the authlogic gem. I have everything up according to railscast and now I am trying to integrate the authlogic functions.

To be more specific than I originally was, I have Projects set up with nested Tasks. I am now trying to use authlogic and set up UI's so that after a user logs in, then the user can go to a UI of "My Projects" and then do all the CRUD they need to do on their projects, but the user will only have read access to projects that are not theirs. All users will have their Projects in the same data model (or that's what I'm attempting to do). I created a "myprojects" controller, copied over the project controller code & have been trying to work with "current_user.projects", but I'm getting an error since the Project is an undefined method.

How does one do this? Is there a way to pass the Project controller & views the "current_user.projects" data to re-use the Project controller & views? I know I'll have to put condition logic in to display or not display the 'Edit' paths, I'm just buggered on how to pass the subset of data if this is the way to go. Do I need the Myprojects controller or am I barking up a wrong tree? Do named routes come into play here? Enquiring minds want to know as a famous tabloid once advertised...

Thanks in advance!!

Following is my code: --------------------Project controller-------------------- class ProjectsController < ApplicationController   def index     @projects = Project.all

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # index.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @projects }     end   end

  def show     @project = Project.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # show.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @projects }     end   end

  def new     @project = Project.new

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # new.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @project }     end   end

  def edit     @project = Project.find(params[:id])   end

  def create     @project = Project.new(params[:project])

    respond_to do |format|       if @project.save         flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully created.'         format.html { redirect_to(@project) }         format.xml { render :xml => @project, :status => :created, :location => @project }       else         format.html { render :action => "new" }         format.xml { render :xml => @project.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }       end     end   end

  def update     @project = Project.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|       if @project.update_attributes(params[:project])         flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully updated.'         format.html { redirect_to(@project) }         format.xml { head :ok }       else         format.html { render :action => "edit" }         format.xml { render :xml => @project.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }       end     end   end

  def destroy     @project = Project.find(params[:id])     @project.destroy     flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully deleted.'     respond_to do |format|       format.html { redirect_to(projects_url) }       format.xml { head :ok }     end   end end

--------------------Myprojects controller-------------------- class MyprojectsController < ApplicationController   def index     @myprojects = current_user.Project.all #<-------- 'Project' reference here is getting an undefined method error

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # index.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @myprojects }     end   end

  def show     @project = current_user.Project.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # show.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @myprojects }     end   end

  def new     @project = Project.new

    respond_to do |format|       format.html # new.html.erb       format.xml { render :xml => @project }     end   end

  def edit     @project = current_user.Project.find(params[:id])   end

  def create     @project = Project.new(params[:project])

    respond_to do |format|       if @project.save         flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully created.'         format.html { redirect_to(@project) }         format.xml { render :xml => @project, :status => :created, :location => @project }       else         format.html { render :action => "new" }         format.xml { render :xml => @project.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }       end     end   end

  def update     @project = current_user.Project.find(params[:id])

    respond_to do |format|       if @project.update_attributes(params[:project])         flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully updated.'         format.html { redirect_to(@project) }         format.xml { head :ok }       else         format.html { render :action => "edit" }         format.xml { render :xml => @project.errors, :status => :unprocessable_entity }       end     end   end

  def destroy     @project = current_user.Project.find(params[:id])     @project.destroy     flash[:notice] = 'Project was successfully deleted.'     respond_to do |format|       format.html { redirect_to(myprojects_url) }       format.xml { head :ok }     end   end end

--------------------Project model-------------------- class Project < ActiveRecord::Base   validates_presence_of :name

# allow ordering of tasks by step_number   has_many :tasks, :dependent => :destroy, :order => 'step_number ASC'   accepts_nested_attributes_for :tasks, :reject_if => lambda { |a| a.values.all?(&:blank?) }, :allow_destroy => true

  def task_attributes=(task_attributes)     task_attributes.each do |attributes|      tasks.build(attributes)     end   end

  # Following statements tie Projects to users   belongs_to :user

end

--------------------User model-------------------- class User < ActiveRecord::Base   # following line commented out. Came from authlogic, but not sure what it means…   # attr_accessible :username, :email, :password

  # Added following line from railscast demo. Note: http://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic_example   # has an optional block for passing other config options, but didn’t go there for now…   acts_as_authentic

  has_many :projects end

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