Simplify code on method about 4 models

rubyonrails-talk
1

I'm trying to get more into the Ruby mindset. I know I should accomplish more with less code. I came up with this method that does work, but I think could really use some simplification.

There is 4 models. Account Company (belongs to Account) User   (belongs to Company)   (belongs to Role)   (to get the account id, I would need to do user.company.account_id) Role

User.role_id (if it's a 1, it means it's the Account Owner) There is only ONE account owner per account.

So, when a "customer"(role_id=4) signs in, under the Users tab, he's supposed to see two companies: 1) the company he belongs to 2) and the account owners company

So I need to come up with something like this: @companies = Company.all(:conditions => ["id == ? or id == ?", current_user.company_id, account_owner_company_id])

1) Coming up with the company he belongs to it's easy: current_user.company_id

2) Coming up with the account owner company id it's more difficult and requires several queries. The method I have does the following: a) Finds the customer's account_id b) Looks for ALL account owners in the database c) Tries to match the customer's account_id to one of the account owners id's d) Finally, returns the account owner's company id

2

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You can easily see that if the database grows, looking for ALL account owners in the database can take up a lot of resources. Can you suggest an easier way to find the account owner company id when being logged in as a customer?

Your data structure feels a little weird to me - Presumably accounts have multiple companies. So does someone with role_id == 1 own all the companies in the account that the company_id points to? It feels a little lopsided to have this one privileged company. I think personally I would give account an owner_id attribute.

Anyway, assuming that users will grow rapidly but that an account will only ever have a manageable number of companies in it, something like

all_companies_in_account = current_user.company.account.companies owner = User.find_by_role_id_and_company_id(1, all_companies_in_account)

would find you the owner.

Fred

3

Thanks Fred!

The reason of this setup (might need some adjusting) is that an Account has an attribute paying_method. So only the account_owner is the one that pays.

The account owner can add, edit or delete Companies and Users. He's the administrator for that Account.

The Users under the account owner's Company, are kinda like managers or agents.

The Users under other than the account owner's company are customers.

4

I think you can dispense with Company altogether and just have an association class describing a User's relationship to an Account:

Account
  has_many :users, :through => :memberships

User
  belongs_to :account

Membership
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :account
  has_one :role # agent, owner, etc.

~ jf

5

Sorry, typo. Should be:

Account
  has_many :users, :through => :memberships

User
  has_many :accounts, :through => :memberships

Membership
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :account
  has_one :role # agent, owner, etc.