Subdomain Account Keys Best Practice

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi all,

I’m thinking of useing sub-domains as account keys, something I’ve played with previously.

I have accounts and users, fairly standard, except that users can belong to many accounts, and accounts can have many users.

So I figure I need to have an area on the main domain, that allows users to view their account memberships and things. Sort of like a dashboard for each user. When they login without a sub domain, all their membership informaition, and cross-account information ( eg todo’s for all accounts ) would be available. When they log in with a sub domain, all information is scoped to the account.

Is this thinking fraught with danger? or reasonably sane?

Thanx for any insights.

Daniel

2

Daniel,

What you're describing can be done without much trouble. I use a similar model at trackplace.com. Just set aside some domains:

# environment.rb RESERVED_SUBDOMAINS = %w(     www www1 www2 www3 www4 www5 www6 www7 www8 www9 www10 web     app app1 app2 app3 app4 app5 app6 app7 app8 app9 app10     db db1 db2 db3 db4 db5 database     blog blogs weblog public private secure store stores help admin admins     mail email emails root postmaster postmasters friend friends     test testing dev marketing search profile profiles group groups forum forums   )

# account.rb validates_exclusion_of :subdomain, :in => RESERVED_SUBDOMAINS, :message => 'Web site name is reserved.'

Set aside a subdomain like 'profile' or 'membership' to handle membership stuff and the request_routing plugin to handle routing by subdomain.

Hope this helps,

3

Hi Thanx for your input.

I’m not sure I understand what the request_routing plugin would be doing here.

Also what benefit is using a special sub-domain over the base domain?

Cheers

4

Daniel,

You said "... I need to have an area on the main domain, that allows users to view their account memberships and things..."

The request_routing plugin allows you to route off of additional conditions like the subdomain:

# routes.rb map.with_options(:controller => 'users', :conditions => { :subdomain => 'members' }) do |url|     url.profile ''     url.change_password 'change_password', :action => 'change_password'     ... end

members.example.com # => the area you want to provide to handle profiles

This is one way to do it...

Or a scheme like:

john.example.com/profile

probably makes more sense.

5

Ok I think I see what you mean. I’ll give it a try.

Thanx for you help