A matter of style...

I've seen plenty of code examples that show how to set the current user or subdomain to a variable. For example:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

class ProfileController < ActionController::Base before_filter :set_current_user private def set_current_user @current_user = User.find_by_username(session[:username]) if session[:username] end end

However, I prefer this way:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

class ProfileController < ActionController::Base private def current_user @current_user ||= User.find_by_username(session[:username]) if session[:username] end helper_method :current_user end

With this technique, I always use the current_user method to determine the current user, and never reference the @current_user variable. If an action doesn't need to know the current_user, no time is wasted to set it.