I am creating an aplication where users can be of two types: a patient or a doctor. Each type has its own set of attributes.
Is it possible to create a User model that contains the shared attributes, and then create a Patient and Doctor models that inherit from User ?
No, but you can do what you said, and then for each subclass add an association to a model that contains the specific attributes. Then you can use delegate to make things seem seamless.
class User
end
class Doctor < User
has_one :doctor_profile
delegate :phd_in, :to => :doctor_profile
end
class Patient < User
has_one :patient_profile
delegate :symptoms, :to => :patient_profile
end
class DoctorProfile
# E.g. attributes: phd_in:string
end
class PatientProfile
# E.g. attributes: symptoms:text
end
