The users of my Rails app tend to have multiple accounts to login. Cookies are used to store the names of those accounts in each user’s browser as comma separated values. This makes it easier for my users to switch between accounts.

I created a helper module to handle all the dirty work related to cookies:

module StoredAccountsHelper

  def store_account(account)
    names = stored_accounts.unshift(account.name)
    cookies.permanent[:accounts] = names.uniq.join(',')
  end

  def discard_accounts
    cookies.delete(:accounts)
  end

  def stored_accounts
    cookies[:accounts]&.split(',') || []
  end

  def account_options
    stored_accounts&.sort&.map
  end

  def only_one_stored_account?
    stored_accounts.count == 1
  end

  def find_stored_account
    @account = Account.activated.where(:name => params[:account]).first
    unless @account
      flash[:notice] = t('views.not_permitted')
      redirect_to new_stored_account_path
      discard_accounts
    end
  end

  def stored_accounts_present
    if stored_accounts.empty?
      redirect_to new_stored_account_path
    end
  end

end

This helper works and has stood the test of time, however it feels wrong to me. Shouldn’t all the methods be methods of a class (e.g. named AccountsStore) rather than those of a helper module?

That way, I could do things like:

accounts_store = AccountsStore.new(@account)
accounts_store.add(@account)
accounts_store.remove(@account)
accounts_store.list_all
accounts_store.options

etc.

But unfortunately, cookies can only be used in controllers and helpers if I am informed correctly.

Is there a more elegant logic to add values to and remove values from a cookie in Rails?

Thanks for any pointers.