What is the best way to connect to the database for each user in Rails

Question

What is the best way to connect to the database for each user in Rails ?

I understand this is a bad Rails design practice, but we are gradually replacing an existing web application that uses one database for each user. A complete redesign / rewriting is not possible.

Answer 1

Put something like this in your application controller. I use the subdomain plus "_clientdb" to select the database name. I have all the databases using the same username and password, so I can get this from the db configuration file.

Hope this helps!

 class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base before_filter :hijack_db def hijack_db db_name = request.subdomains.first + "_clientdb" # lets manually connect to the proper db ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection( :adapter => ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[ENV["RAILS_ENV"]]['adapter'], :host => ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[ENV["RAILS_ENV"]]['host'], :username => ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[ENV["RAILS_ENV"]]['username'], :password => ActiveRecord::Base.configurations[ENV["RAILS_ENV"]]['password'], :database => db_name ) end end 

Answer 2

Take a look at ActiveRecord :: Base.establish_connection . This is how you connect to another database server. I can’t get any more help since I don’t know how you recognize the user or map it to the database, but I believe that the main database will have this information (and the connection information should be in the database.yml file) .

Good luck.