# Supporting multiple customers in a single rails app

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 27, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034 "2007-02-27T19:15:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chet)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2007, 7:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034/1 "2007-02-27T19:15:16Z")

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Here is what we are trying to do -

The idea is to allow different companies to access the same rails  
application as their own personalized application. The _only_ change in  
the app per company is the title of the page, which is changed based on  
the logged in user’s company through an attribute in the company table.  
Internally it is one rails app, one database, security and access  
control implemented based on models. The users are all “company”  
specific. Currently at login, users choose the “company” from a  
drop-down. Once logged in, we know who the user is, what company he  
belongs to and can serve appropriate content. This works fine in testing  
and I am looking for suggestions to make the login process easier.

Is there a way to eliminate the “choose company” at login? I looked  
around and there seem to be a few options. But I am writing this to ask  
the experts for suggestions. Certainly, there are scalability and  
deployment issues that may impose an upper limit on any option – but as  
a brain storming exercise, wanted to see what else is possible. We have  
looked at one subdomain per company, creating company specific instances  
of the app etc. but that might be an overkill for this app. We wanted to  
try to stick with (as much as possible) a single database and a single  
instance of the rails app.

We are playing around with the new routes in 1.2 to check if we can have  
company specific urls ([应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载](http://myapp.com/company1),  
[应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载](http://myapp.com/company2) etc.) to get around this. I will let you know  
how our efforts proceed.

In the meantime, any suggestions, pointers from the experts?

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**Author:** ![chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chet)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2007, 8:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034/2 "2007-02-27T20:18:19Z")

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Well the first thing that came to my mind was the company-specific url,  
though for me in terms of:

[http://myapp/company1/login](http://myapp/company1/login) is the login page, but once logged in, the  
site  
acts as normal with no “company1/” prefix.

routes.rb:

map.company\_login “:company/login”, :controller =\> ‘account’, :action =\>  
‘login’  
(which will then fill in params[:company] with the given string, with  
which  
you can validate proper input).

Jason

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**Author:** ![chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chet)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2007, 8:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034/3 "2007-02-27T20:50:38Z")

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Thanks Jason.

That is exactly what we are trying with the new 1.2 routes. I will post  
a summary once we know if that works.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chet)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2007, 9:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034/4 "2007-02-27T21:10:30Z")

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I ran a site for a few years (pre-rails) that had a different  
environment for different companies. Everything ran off the same  
codebase, and we did a subdomain lookup to populate local variables,  
etc.

I wouldn’t do it this way with rails. I’d run separate web environment  
for each customer, and probably use a single database.

I could maintain the consistency of the code throughout the different  
apps by using a single capistrano deployment - i.e. creating multiple  
identical copies. IMO the advantage would be in the scaleability.  
Given that rails apps are so memory hungry, there’s every chance that  
a successful site would need multiple instances spread across  
multiple servers.

So, why not isolate the apps by company

This is just my opinion…I’m no expert…

To answer your question, though, Jason’s suggestion of a company  
specific url makes sense. You’d need to wire the logout / login  
functionally, accordingly.

Using subdomains would be easier. And might look more “professional”  
from the clients’ point of view.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@chet](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chet)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2007, 10:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/supporting-multiple-customers-in-a-single-rails-app/87034/5 "2007-02-27T22:58:42Z")

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On 27 Feb 2007, at 19:15, Chet wrote:

> We are playing around with the new routes in 1.2 to check if we can  
> have  
> company specific urls ([http://myapp.com/company1](http://myapp.com/company1),  
> [应用宝官网-全网最新最热手机应用游戏下载](http://myapp.com/company2) etc.) to get around this. I will let you  
> know  
> how our efforts proceed.
> 
> In the meantime, any suggestions, pointers from the experts?

I would recommend the account\_location plugin (script/plugin install  
[http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/account\_location/](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails/plugins/account_location/)) and  
use the subdomain as the identifier:  
[http://company1.myapp.com/](http://company1.myapp.com/)  
[http://company2.myapp.com/](http://company2.myapp.com/)  
You’ll just need to put a wildcard a-record in your dns entries  
(\*.myapp.com) in order to forward all subdomain to your rails app. If  
you want to test it locally (and want to use the subdomain, add a few  
entries in your hosts (\*nix) file or hosts in system32 on windows  
that point to localhost).

It’s just so much more intuitive and gives a real feeling of custom  
branding (a subjective feeling your customer gets because it’s the  
very first thing in the url).

Best regards

Peter De Berdt