# Seperation of application specific view/controller code from **URL:** \ **Category:** Engines\ **Created:** [January 24, 2006, 11:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seperation-of-application-specific-view-controller-code-from/102797 "2006-01-24T23:17:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bakki)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 11:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seperation-of-application-specific-view-controller-code-from/102797/1 "2006-01-24T23:17:59Z")
[I posted to Rails Engines Forum but didn’t get a response so I am posting here] I installed both login and user engines and got them working. Thanks for an excellent job! Now, I have some questions on how to customize them without breaking the code or making future upgrades messy. I have several questions and any help will be greatly appreciated. I am designing a student registration app for a community college. First the view stuff. I’d like the signup/login/logout/change password to be available via a sidebar. Basically I am trying to make this app feel like a desktop all using Ajax. I would like to have a lot more fields in the user table for the user (student) profile and preferably I’d like to put the edit form right in the side bar using an Ajax call. I currently have my cart for courses chosen in the side bar and I’d like the whole login system to work in a similar fashion. For example can I make a link\_to\_remote Ajax call to :controller =\> user :action =\> signup and have it replace a div inside my sidebar? How would I create a partial for that? If the rhtml files are in my app/views will the engine know how to find it or is there a configuration option for it? Next the controller stuff, it says in the UserController to overide the home action. I’d like the home to be Catalog/welcome. How do I overide this? With regard to the user\_engine, I’d like students to be able to self register and access their own records (both profiles and course selections). The college staff can access ALL registrations and also the courses database. So the admin creates staff users with these permissions. I don’t need the guest role and the user role. Admin will define a student role for the self registration. Can I delete the default user and guest roles? How do I make registering students automatically be assigned this role? Thank you in advance, bakki kudva ---
**Author:** ![bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bakki)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seperation-of-application-specific-view-controller-code-from/102797/2 "2006-01-25T17:51:22Z")
Hi Bakki, apologies for the delay, lots of work on… On 1/24/06, Bakki K. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > First the view stuff. I’d like the signup/login/logout/change password > to be available via a sidebar. Basically I am trying to make this app > feel like a desktop all using Ajax … and preferably I’d like to put the edit form right in > the side bar using an Ajax call. I currently have my cart for courses > chosen in the side bar and I’d like the whole login system to work in a > similar fashion. For example can I make a link\_to\_remote Ajax call to > :controller =\> user :action =\> signup and have it replace a div inside > my sidebar? How would I create a partial for that? If the rhtml files > are in my app/views will the engine know how to find it or is there a > configuration option for it? You can create whatever partials you like in your own application. If they are present in your /app/views folder they will be used in preference of any engine views. To make these new forms work via AJAX, you’ll need to create your own controller (possibly simply another UserController) to handle the data being sent by by the AJAX components and send back appropriate responses. This is going to be a few hours of work at least, there’s no switch you can flip to turn either of the engines into a AJAX machine… > I would like to have a lot more fields in the user table for the user > (student) profile You can add any fields you like to the database, it won’t break the system. > Next the controller stuff, it says in the UserController to overide the > home action. I’d like the home to be Catalog/welcome. How do I overide > this? An upcoming release of the LoginEngine will provide this as a straight option. You can use the current release branch - [http://opensvn.csie.org/rails\_engines/login\_engine/branches/rb\_1.0](http://opensvn.csie.org/rails_engines/login_engine/branches/rb_1.0) > I don’t need the guest role and the user role. Can I delete the > default user and guest roles? Be careful deleting roles that the UserEngine expects to find. The Guest role is implicit for any useres who aren’t logged in, and removing this cause the UserEngine to complain at startup. The User role is the role automatically assigned to new users, so you might consider making this the base set of permissions for every user. > With regard to the user\_engine, I’d like students to be able to self > register and access their own records (both profiles and course > selections). The college staff can access ALL registrations and also the > courses database. So the admin creates staff users with these > permissions. The key here is understanding that the UserEngine only restricts access to particular actions. Therefore if you only want a particular set of users to be able to manipulate a specific set of data, you need to provide a set of controllers/actions for manipulating that subset of data (for example, the currently-logged-in user’s own data), and provide another set of controllers or actions for your admin/super-users to work with all the data. > Admin will define a student role for the self registration. How do I make registering students > automatically be assigned this role? By all means rename the User role to Student - there are config options which do this when you’re running bootstrap. However, you might also find it makes sense to have a special action which creates users with the specific set of Roles that your application requires (remember, users can have MANY roles…) I hope this helps, sorry I don’t have time at the moment to give more detailed answers… - james ---
**Author:** ![bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/6a8cbe/32.png) [@bakki](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bakki)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2006, 8:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/seperation-of-application-specific-view-controller-code-from/102797/3 "2006-01-25T20:47:44Z")
Hi James, Thank you very much for taking time from your busy schedule to elaborate answers to my questions. I very much appreciate it. It helped me a lot to understand how I might have to architect my app. -bakki