Hi all,
I’m using acts_as_authenticated for the front end facing part of my
site. I have a model called Customer. I now want to protect the admin
sides of things. I am thinking of using Ezra’s acl plugin
(http://opensvn.csie.org/ezra/rails/plugins/dev/acl_system2/README)
for this. My only problem is that I don’t want the model for admin
users to be called Customer, I’d rather it be called User or something
(call me pedantic 
So, I could rename my Customer model to User and implement the above
plugin which will give me the authorization I want. But then I lose
the ability to do:
@order.customer.fullname
Instead it will be:
@order.user.fullname
Also, for admin users, I just want to store their username and
password, not all the other associated data that goes with a customer.
Is this a use for STI? Can I somehow alias the User model so that it
can be accessed as Customer as well? Shall I just forget this and live
with the name User?
How do others approach the frontend/backend authorization scenario? I
would imagine it’s pretty common.
Many thanks,
Jord
Hello Jord,
2006/7/25, Jordan E. [email protected]:
Is this a use for STI? Can I somehow alias the User model so that it
can be accessed as Customer as well? Shall I just forget this and live
with the name User?
Nothing prevents you from doing:
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer, :class_name => ‘User’, :foreign_key =>
:customer_id
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders, :foreign_key => :customer_id
end
That takes care of one problem. Secondly, your admin users. Yes,
this is a use for STI. You can do this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_presence_of :login, :password
end
class Customer < User
validates_presence_of :address, :phone
has_many :orders, :foreign_key => :customer_id, :order => :order_no
end
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer, :foreign_key => :customer_id
validates_presence_of :customer_id
end
Hope that helps !
Hi Francois,
Nothing prevents you from doing:
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer, :class_name => ‘User’, :foreign_key => :customer_id
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders, :foreign_key => :customer_id
end
That’s great to know. I always assumed that the association had to be
the name of the table. Very useful, thanks.
end
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :customer, :foreign_key => :customer_id
validates_presence_of :customer_id
end
Hope that helps !
It does, greatly. Thank you very much 
I can’t help thinking that this is too much. I only need to password
protect a controller with one or two usernames and I wanted to keep
the acts_as_authenticated code as DRY as possible, which is why I’ve
gone for this idea. Do you think it’s a good idea to mix customers and
internal users into the same table? What do you think?
Cheers,
Jord