Anonymous user modeling

Rails
#1

Hello,

I’m working on my first simple Rails app in which users submit sport
“tweets” (e.g. “tennis, squash”) and the server matches them up with
partners. The server will return you a list of SportMatches based on
similar tweets and you have different options (e.g. email, SMS) to
reply back to someone’s tweet and accept him/her as partner.
Initially, the modeling was straight forward since: User has_many
SportTweets and SportTweet belongs to User. Notifications were simply
part of the User, or they could have been modeled as a 1-to-1
relationship to User.

My business requirements changed a little, as now I have anonymous
users who can also post SportTweets. Because they don’t have an
account/profile, they must also submit notifications (e.g. email, SMS)
with the tweet. I don’t know how to model this the Rails way.
SportTweets are now either anonymous, or authenticated-user-posted
(AUP). So, now, my SportTweets table will have the following columns:

  • type: either “anonymous” or “AUP”
  • user_id: only for AUP
  • notifications_id: only for anonymous
  • sports: for all
  • post_date: for all
  • post_location: for all
  • etc.

There would be a Notifications table. A notification record would
belong either to a User, or to a SportsTweet. I guess I would model
this with polymorphic associations.

That just doesn’t look like the Rails way. Did anyone come across a
similar problem? How did you solve it?

Thanks,
T

#2

On Dec 11, 2:48pm, Mr_Tibs [email protected] wrote:

relationship to User.

  • sports: for all
  • post_date: for all
  • post_location: for all
  • etc.

There would be a Notifications table. A notification record would
belong either to a User, or to a SportsTweet. I guess I would model
this with polymorphic associations.

That just doesn’t look like the Rails way. Did anyone come across a
similar problem? How did you solve it?

Is there a particular reason for storing notifications separately? By
that I mean that it seems likely that authenticated users will also
have SMS / email / etc. I’d typically just borrow the existing User
machinery but add in a flag (“anonymous”, for instance) that skips the
registration parts.

–Matt J.

#3

Hey Matt,

Thanks for the suggestion. I found it in “The Rails 3 Way” - chapter
9: STI tables.

Regards,
T