Okay, so I worked it through and came to the following solution.
I needed to costumize devise a little bit, but it's not that complicated.
The User model
# user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
:recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable
attr_accessible :email, :password, :password_confirmation, :remember_me
belongs_to :rolable, :polymorphic => true
end
The Customer model
# customer.rb
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end
The Designer model
# designer.rb
class Designer < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :user, :as => :rolable
end
So the User model has a simple polymorphic association, defining if it's a Customer or a Designer.
The next thing I had to do was to generate the devise views with rails g devise:views to be part of my application. Since I only needed the registration to be customized I kept the app/views/devise/registrations folder only and removed the rest.
Then I customized the registrations view for new registrations, which can be found in app/views/devise/registrations/new.html.erb after you generated them.
<h2>Sign up</h2>
<%
# customized code begin
params[:user][:user_type] ||= 'customer'
if ["customer", "designer"].include? params[:user][:user_type].downcase
child_class_name = params[:user][:user_type].downcase.camelize
user_type = params[:user][:user_type].downcase
else
child_class_name = "Customer"
user_type = "customer"
end
resource.rolable = child_class_name.constantize.new if resource.rolable.nil?
# customized code end
%>
<%= form_for(resource, :as => resource_name, :url => registration_path(resource_name)) do |f| %>
<%= my_devise_error_messages! # customized code %>
<div><%= f.label :email %><br />
<%= f.email_field :email %></div>
<div><%= f.label :password %><br />
<%= f.password_field :password %></div>
<div><%= f.label :password_confirmation %><br />
<%= f.password_field :password_confirmation %></div>
<% # customized code begin %>
<%= fields_for resource.rolable do |rf| %>
<% render :partial => "#{child_class_name.underscore}_fields", :locals => { :f => rf } %>
<% end %>
<%= hidden_field :user, :user_type, :value => user_type %>
<% # customized code end %>
<div><%= f.submit "Sign up" %></div>
<% end %>
<%= render :partial => "devise/shared/links" %>
For each User type I created a separate partial with the custom fields for that specific User type, i.e. Designer --> _designer_fields.html
<div><%= f.label :label_name %><br />
<%= f.text_field :label_name %></div>
Then I setup the routes for devise to use the custom controller on registrations
devise_for :users, :controllers => { :registrations => 'UserRegistrations' }
Then I generated a controller to handle the customized registration process, copied the original source code from the create method in the Devise::RegistrationsController and modified it to work my way (don't forget to move your view files to the appropriate folder, in my case app/views/user_registrations
class UserRegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
def create
build_resource
# customized code begin
# crate a new child instance depending on the given user type
child_class = params[:user][:user_type].camelize.constantize
resource.rolable = child_class.new(params[child_class.to_s.underscore.to_sym])
# first check if child instance is valid
# cause if so and the parent instance is valid as well
# it's all being saved at once
valid = resource.valid?
valid = resource.rolable.valid? && valid
# customized code end
if valid && resource.save # customized code
if resource.active_for_authentication?
set_flash_message :notice, :signed_up if is_navigational_format?
sign_in(resource_name, resource)
respond_with resource, :location => redirect_location(resource_name, resource)
else
set_flash_message :notice, :inactive_signed_up, :reason => inactive_reason(resource) if is_navigational_format?
expire_session_data_after_sign_in!
respond_with resource, :location => after_inactive_sign_up_path_for(resource)
end
else
clean_up_passwords(resource)
respond_with_navigational(resource) { render_with_scope :new }
end
end
end
What this all basically does is that the controller determines which user type must be created according to the user_type parameter that's delivered to the controller's create method by the hidden field in the view which uses the parameter by a simple GET-param in the URL.
For example:
If you go to /users/sign_up?user[user_type]=designer you can create a Designer.
If you go to /users/sign_up?user[user_type]=customer you can create a Customer.
The my_devise_error_messages! method is a helper method which also handles validation errors in the associative model, based on the original devise_error_messages! method
module ApplicationHelper
def my_devise_error_messages!
return "" if resource.errors.empty? && resource.rolable.errors.empty?
messages = rolable_messages = ""
if !resource.errors.empty?
messages = resource.errors.full_messages.map { |msg| content_tag(:li, msg) }.join
end
if !resource.rolable.errors.empty?
rolable_messages = resource.rolable.errors.full_messages.map { |msg| content_tag(:li, msg) }.join
end
messages = messages + rolable_messages
sentence = I18n.t("errors.messages.not_saved",
:count => resource.errors.count + resource.rolable.errors.count,
:resource => resource.class.model_name.human.downcase)
html = <<-HTML
<div id="error_explanation">
<h2>#{sentence}</h2>
<ul>#{messages}</ul>
</div>
HTML
html.html_safe
end
end
UPDATE:
To be able to support routes like /designer/sign_up and /customer/sign_up you can do the following in your routes file:
# routes.rb
match 'designer/sign_up' => 'user_registrations#new', :user => { :user_type => 'designer' }
match 'customer/sign_up' => 'user_registrations#new', :user => { :user_type => 'customer' }
Any parameter that's not used in the routes syntax internally gets passed to the params hash. So :user gets passed to the params hash.
So... that's it. With a little tweeking here and there I got it working in a quite general way, that's easily extensible with many other User models sharing a common User table.
Hope someone finds it useful.
