Correct way of applying REST in Rails 3 many User Types

I want to a开发者_JAVA百科pply REST to my Rails 3 application.

I understand the basics but am still a NOOB and would like some help or advice if this is correct.

I have a USER model. However I have three kinds of User, as in they have different roles in the application.

When I create say the Celebrant I need to do other things in the create action that are different then the things I need to to for the Manager which is again different from what I need to do for the Participant.

So I was thinking of creating three resources.

1.Celebrant - new create only
2.Manager -new create only
3.Participant. -new create only

This way I can have the three REST NEW and CREATE actions that are different from each.

Is this the best way to go about this?

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A couple of thoughts…

1. DRY

If Celebrant, Manager, and Participant all extend User, then it's best to have 1 controller. Most of the code will be the same between the 3 controllers otherwise.

2. Fat Models, Skinny Controllers

The controllers just pass parameters to models, so really you should only have to call 1 method on the model in the controller, like User.create. This makes it so your controllers don't perform any logic, so you don't need 3 separate controllers.

Check out the inherited_resources gem to pretty much remove all code from your controllers.

Doing it like this, you handle what happens before/after create in each of your User model subclasses.

3. Using a Role model instead of User subclasses

I ran into your exact problem before. I started with 3 user classes. But I quickly wanted to do more with the roles, add more, blur the lines, etc. By having 1 User model which has_many :roles (there's role plugins out there), you can handle all your custom logic in your save callbacks in the user model based on roles. Now your controller is lean, and you don't have to manage 3 classes.

Hope that helps.