I agree with Marnen. The easiest way would be to just add a role field to the user model.
I wouldn't mess with inherited classes or associations for what you are describing. But if you do, you really should use inheritance, as Marnen described. The only other table that I might consider would a "domain-table" called Roles (or anything you want). It could start with simply an :id field and a :name field. This could later be expanded to include more data. Then in your user table you could define a field for the role_id which could be set via the Role table. The advantage of this is that you get a central place to define all possible roles within the database rather that in just your rails application. This would allow you to guarantee referential integrity in the database, so that a user could not be made with an unintended role by bypassing your rails app (at the mysql or psql prompts, for example). Of course, the importance of an unintended role getting into the database depends of your application setup. If you blacklist everything and only open up certain areas of the app by white-listing roles, then the consequence is less severe. Beware however, if you whitelist everything and only blacklist based on the role. This type of setup might allow unrestricted access to an unintended role. For this reason, I tend to blacklist everything, and then whitelist based on the role. Andrew --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
