Devise model without devise routes

Question

I have two Rails projects sharing some files, one is the actual app and the other one is the admin tool for the app. They share migrations, models, some config, etc. The admin tools is ActiveAdmin 1.0.0-pre2 and Rails' version is 4.2.

I have two Devise models, User and AdminUser. In the app project, there's no route for admin_user and I want to keep it that way, but if I don't add:

devise_for :admin_users

to the routes file, I get all sort of strange errors, such as:

ActionView::Template::Error: undefined method `admin_user_confirmation_url' for #<ActionDispatch::Routing::RoutesProxy:0x007fc613ecde08>

or:

Could not find a valid mapping for <AdminUser ...>

whenever I'm creating an AdminUser in the app project (sample data generation).

How can I achieve having a devise model, without the routes?

Answer 1

If you just want a model for Admin, to Have some methods and data, remove all devise entries (database_authenticatable, etc.) from the admin user migration and model, and use it as a plain activerecord model. If you need any specific devise modules, you can add them one by one. But the devise modules you add will likely require the controller and routes to be present.

Answer 2

What I would do if I were you:

1. Merge the two applications into one.
2. Create a new field in the User migration and call it "role", with default value "user"
3. Use Cancan or something similar to set different permissions depending on the role ("user" or "admin"). For example users with role "user" cannot view any of the admin pages. And this way whoever is admin in your website, doesn't need to have a separate model/account for loging in to active admin.

Don't get me wrong, I just can't think of a good reason to keep the two sides as different projects. It will only add problems to your logic and implementation and you will have to constantly be passing information around. I actually use ActiveAdmin in the way I explained above and everything works like a charm.