how to store/model users/faceboook users/linkedin users, etc, with ActiveRecord?

Posted by crankharder on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by crankharder
Published on 2010-01-21T00:24:34Z Indexed on 2010/04/11 14:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 281

Filed under:

activerecord

|

data-modeling

My app has

"normal" users: those which come through a typical signup page
facebook(FB) users: those which come from Facebook connect
"FB-normal" users: a user that can log with both email/password * FB connect

Further, there's the a slew of other openID-ish login methods (I don't think openID itself will be acceptable since it doesn't link up the accounts and allow the 3rd party specific features (posting to twitter, adding a FB post, etc etc))

So, how do I model this?

Right now we have User class with #facebook_user? defined -- but it gets messy with the "FB-normal" users - plus all the validations become very tricky and hard to interpret. Also, there are methods like #deliver_password_reset! which make no sense in the context for facebook-only users. (this is lame)

I've thought out STI (User::Facebook, User::Normal, User::FBNormal, etc.) This makes validations super slick, but it doesn't scale to other connection types, and all the permutations between them... User::FacebookLinkedInNormal(wtf?) Doing this with a bunch of modules I think would suck a lot.

Any other ideas?

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about activerecord

Rails & ActiveRecord: Appending methods to models that inherit from ActiveRecord::Base

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a standard ActiveRecord model with the following: class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base custom_method :first_field, :second_field end At the moment, that custom_method is picked up by a module sent to ActiveRecord::Base. The functionality basically works, but of course, it attaches itself… >>> More
Rails ActiveRecord - Best way to perform an include?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have three models: class Book < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :collections has_many :users, :through => :collections end class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :collections has_many :books, :through => :collections end class Collection < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to… >>> More
Getting types of the attributes in an ActiveRecord object

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I would like to know if it is possible to get the types (as known by AR - eg in the migration script and database) programmatically (I know the data exists in there somewhere). For example, I can deal with all the attribute names: ar.attribute_names.each { |name| puts name } .attributes just… >>> More
Changing ActiveRecord attribute value in before_save hook

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I needed to fix the encoding of an ActiveRecord attribute and decided to do it in a before_save hook. And at this point I noticed an unexpected feature. When I wanted to change the value of the attribute, simple using the attribute_name=XY did not work as I expected. Instead of that I needed to use… >>> More
Conditions with whitespaces in activerecord find

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
So i am trying to do this Order.find :all, :conditions => "org = 'test org'" what ends up firing is SELECT * FROM `orders` WHERE (org = 'test org') the whitespace in the argument gets stripped. what am i missing.. im really stumped here. please help! >>> More

Related posts about data-modeling

Handling incremental Data Modeling Changes in Functional Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Most of the problems I have to solve in my job as a developer have to do with data modeling. For example in a OOP Web Application world I often have to change the data properties that are in a object to meet new requirements. If I'm lucky I don't even need to programmatically add new "behavior" code… >>> More
Data Modeling Resources

as seen on SQL Blog - Search for 'SQL Blog'
You can find many different data modeling resources. It is impossible to list all of them. I selected only the most valuable ones for me, and, of course, the ones I contributed to. Books Chris J. Date: An Introduction to Database Systems – IMO a “must” to understand the relational model… >>> More
Struggling with a data modeling problem

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am struggling with a data model (I use MySQL for the database). I am uneasy about what I have come up with. If someone could suggest a better approach, or point me to some reference matter I would appreciate it. The data would have organizations of many types. I am trying to do a 3 level classification… >>> More
Need some advice on Core Data modeling strategy

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm working on an iPhone app and need a little advice on modeling the Core Data schema. My idea is a utility that allows the user to speed-dial their contacts using user-created rules based on the time of day. In other words, I would tell the app that my wife is commuting from 6am to 7am, at work… >>> More
Data Modeling of Entity with Attributes

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm storing some very basic information "data sources" coming into my application. These data sources can be in the form of a document (e.g. PDF, etc.), audio (e.g. MP3, etc.) or video (e.g. AVI, etc.). Say, for example, I am only interested in the filename of the data source. Thus, I have the following… >>> More