Rails way to render different actions & views based on user type?

Question

I have a couple different user types (buyers, sellers, admins).

I\'d like them all to have the same account_path URL, but to use a different action and view.

I\'

Answer 1

Depending on how different the view templates are, it might be beneficial to move some of this logic into the show template instead and do the switching there:

<% if current_user.is_a? Admin %>
<h1> Show Admin Stuff! </h1>
<% end %>

But to answer your question, you need to specify which template to render. This should work if you set up your controller's @action_name. You could do this in your render_by_user method instead of using a local action variable:

def render_by_user
  self.action_name = "#{current_user.class.to_s.downcase}_#{self.action_name}"
  if self.respond_to?(self.action_name) 
    instance_variable_set("@#{current_user.class.to_s.downcase}", current_user) # e.g. set @model to current_user
    self.send(self.action_name)
  else
    flash[:error] ||= "You're not authorized to do that."
    redirect_to root_path
  end
end