Rails 4 Devise Multiple User Models STI

Question

Thanks for reading.

I am using Devise and Rails 4. I want to add multiple User Models(admin, usertype1, usertype2) such that they inherit from the main User Model. I have searched many posts and come to the conclusion that I may use CanCan, which I do not want, or I may use Single Table Inheritance.

The way I see it is to add a type string-column to my main User model I created with Devise. I will also need to extend each sub-class from the parent as in:

class Admin < User
end

class Usertype1 < User
end

class Usertype2 < User
end

My question is: what do I do next? How exactly do I know how to access the type column? Do I also need to override the Devise Controller for the current_user helper method such that I can have current_admin for example?

Thanks again.

Answer 1

STI will give you current_admin, current_user1 and current_user2 Devise methods.

In application_controller.rb, create a custom current_user method like this:

  def current_user
    if current_admin
      current_admin
    elsif current_user1
      current_user1
    else
      current_user2
    end
  end
helper_method :current_user

You will need some work on routes.rb and a custom sessions_controller.rb. See the accepted answer here Rails: Using Devise with single table inheritance

Answer 2

You can also use the easy_roles gem. It is available on github. This gem provides a bitmask solution for your different user roles. You just must have one model, e.g User, this model gets an attribute "role". Just checkout the docs on github. Devise + easy_roles + CanCan is a very good setup, it is very convenient in my opinion. I use this quite often.

Link to github: https://github.com/platform45/easy_roles

Answer 3

I'm not sure this really answers the original question. I am trying to set up multiple session controllers for Devise, and it seems like it really does require multiple models for this use case. Will post back when I've got a working version.