switch_user

Inspired from hobo, switch_user provides a convenient way to switch current user that speeds up your development.

Use Case

switch_user is very useful in such use cases

switch current users in development so that you don't waste your time to logout, login and input email (login) or password any more.
reproduce the user specified error in production. Sometimes the error is only raised for specified user, which is difficult to reproduce for developers, switch_user can help you reproduce it by login as that user.

Example

Visit here: http://switch-user-example.heroku.com/, switch the current user in the select box.

Install

Add in Gemfile.

gem "switch_user"

Usage

Add following code into your layout page.

erb

<%= switch_user_select %>

or haml

= switch_user_select

If there are too many users (in production), the switch_user_select is not a good choice, you should call the switch user request by yourself.

<%= link_to user.login, "/switch_user?scope_id=user_#{user.id}" %>
<%= link_to admin.login, "/switch_user?scope_id=admin_#{admin.id}" %>

= link_to user.login, "/switch_user?scope_id=user_#{user.id}"
= link_to admin.login, "/switch_user?scope_id=admin_#{admin.id}"

If you use it in a Rails 2 project, you have to add a route manually.

# config/routes.rb
map.switch_user '/switch_user', :controller => 'switch_user', :action => 'set_current_user'

Configuration

By default, you can switch between Guest and all users in users table, you don't need to do anything. The following is the default configuration.

SwitchUser.setup do |config|
  # provider may be :devise or :authologic
  config.provider = :devise

  # avaliable_users is a hash, 
  # key is the model name of user (:user, :admin, or any name you use), 
  # value is a block that return the users that can be switched.
  config.available_users = { :user => lambda { User.all } }

  # what field should be displayed on select box
  config.display_field = :email

  # controller_guard is a block, 
  # if it returns true, the request will continue, 
  # else the request will be refused and returns "Permission Denied"
  # if you switch from "admin" to user, the current_user param is "admin"
  config.controller_guard = lambda { |current_user, request| Rails_env == "development" }

  # view_guard is a block, 
  # if it returns true, the switch user select box will be shown, 
  # else the select box will not be shown
  # if you switch from admin to "user", the current_user param is "user"
  config.view_guard == lambda { |current_user, request| Rails.env == "development" }

  # redirect_path is a block, it returns which page will be redirected 
  # after switching a user.
  config.redirect_path = lambda { |request, params| '/' }
end

If the default configuration can't meet your requirement, you can define your customized configuration in config/initializaers/switch_user.rb

If you want to switch both available users and available admins

config.available_users = { :user => lambda { User.available }, :admin => lambda { Admin.available } }

If you want to display the login field in switch user select box

config.display_field = :login

If you only allow switching from admin to user in production environment

config.controller_guard = lambda { |current_user, request| Rails.env == "production" and current_user.admin? }

If you only want to display switch user select box for admins in production environment

config.view_guard = lambda { |current_user, request| Rails.env == "production" and current_user and current_user.admin? }

If you want to redirect user to "/dashboard" page

config.redirect_path = lambda { |request, params| "/dashboard" }