SixArm.com » Ruby » CurrentUser module with current_user methods

Author: Joel Parker Henderson, [email protected]
Copyright: Copyright © 2005-2011 Joel Parker Henderson
License: See LICENSE.txt file

Get and set the current user in the Rails session array.

When you set the current user, this does:

- @current_user = user
- @current_user_id = user.id
- session[:current_user_id] = user.id

Example code

joe = User.find(123)
self.current_user = joe
=> 
@current_user == joe
@current_user_id == 123
session[:current_user_id] == 123

Example controller

class MyController < ApplicationController

  def sign_in(user)
    self.current_user = user
  end

  def sign_out
    self.current_user = nil
  end

  def is_anyone_using_this?
    current_user?
  end

end

Example of reloading

For fast speed, we memoize current_user and current_user_id: we use fast instance variables @current_user and @current_user_id rather than reading the slower session each time.

To reload @current_user and @current_user_id from session, we use the :reload parameter like this:

current_user(:reload => true)

Why use the self prefix?

When we set variables, we must use the “self” prefix because Ruby uses this to do method dispatch.

Right:

self.current_user = joe

Wrong:

current_user = joe