Should a user's profile be a separate model?

Question

I'm learning Rails by building a simple site where users can create articles and comment on those articles. I have a view which lists a user's most recent articles and comments. Now I'd like to add user 'profiles' where users can enter information like their location, age and a short biography. I'm wondering if this profile should be a separate model/resource (I already have quite a lot of fields in my user model because I'm using Authlogic and most of it's optional fields).

What are the pros and cons of using a separate resource?

Answer 1

I'd recommend keeping profile columns in the User model for clarity and simplicity. If you find that you're only using certain fields, only select the columns you need using :select.

If you later find that you need a separate table for some reason (e.g. one user can have multiple profiles) it shouldn't be a lot of work to split them out.

I've made the mistake of having two tables and it didn't buy me anything but additional complexity.

Answer 2

• Pros: It simplifies each model
• Cons: Managing 2 at once is slightly harder

It basically comes down to how big the user and profile are. If the user is 5 fields, and the profile 3, there is no point. But if the user is 12 fields, and the profile 20, then you definitely should.