Admins and Customers vs. Users

Rails
1

Hello,

I wanted to ask how do most people approach this:
I have several staff that act as admins and have control of products,
customers, etc… I also have customers that can log in and change
their details, password, view previous orders, make new orders, etc…
Furthermore, each customer is assigned a discount level.

Now, I wanted to ask, would you normally separate them into two
separate objects (and two separate tables) or would you use just one
object ‘Users’ with a boolean defining whether they are admin or not?
Also, if Admins and Customers approach was selected, how would you
suggest implementing login?
Just trying to plan my application and how I should tackle this.

Cheers,
Elle

2

elle wrote:

Hello,

I wanted to ask how do most people approach this:
I have several staff that act as admins and have control of products,
customers, etc… I also have customers that can log in and change
their details, password, view previous orders, make new orders, etc…
Furthermore, each customer is assigned a discount level.

Now, I wanted to ask, would you normally separate them into two
separate objects (and two separate tables) or would you use just one
object ‘Users’ with a boolean defining whether they are admin or not?
Also, if Admins and Customers approach was selected, how would you
suggest implementing login?
Just trying to plan my application and how I should tackle this.

I think that you might find it profitable to read up on Authorization
and Rails. You can start with these if google does not help:

http://www.binarylogic.com/2008/11/3/tutorial-authlogic-basic-setup
http://code.google.com/p/rails-authorization-plugin/

4

I was thinking about using Authlogic – but that wasn’t my question.

My logic tells me to create admins and customers instead of just users
– just wanted to check what others usually do.

On Mar 25, 9:53 am, James B. [email protected]