ActionAuthorization

A base policy class for authorizing controller actions with access to the current_user and object.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'action_authorization'

And then execute:

bundle

Or install it with:

gem install action_authorization

ActionAuthorization requires a current_user method that returns the currently logged in user.

Include the ActionAuthorization module in your ApplicationController (or indvidual controller(s))

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include ActionAuthorization
end

Create an authorization policy for a resource.

class DocumentPolicy < ActionAuthorization::BasePolicy
  def show?
    document.owner == user
  end
end

Call authorize method in controller action.

class DocumentController < ApplicationController
  def show
    @document = authorize(Document.find(params[:id]))
  end
end

Pass a policy_class to authorize to override the default resource based policy.

class DocumentController < ApplicationController
  def show
    @document = authorize(Document.find(params[:id]), policy_class: UserOwnerPolicy)
  end
end

Check if authorized before displaying a link in the view.

<%= link_to(@document.name, @document) if policy(@document).show? %>

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.