has_roles ¶ ↑

has_roles demonstrates a reference implementation for handling role management.

API

• rdoc.info/github/pluginaweek/has_roles/master/frames

Bugs

• github.com/pluginaweek/has_roles/issues

Development

• github.com/pluginaweek/has_roles

Testing

• travis-ci.org/pluginaweek/has_roles

Source

• git://github.com/pluginaweek/has_roles.git

Mailing List

• groups.google.com/group/pluginaweek-talk

One of the easiest and most straightforward techniques for adding role management and authorization to specific parts of your application is restricting usage on a controller/action-basis. Each role defined in your system is mapped to one or more permissions. Each permission is a combination of a controller and action.

Note that this is a reference implementation and, most likely, should be modified for your own usage.

has_roles requires additional database tables to work. You can generate a migration for these tables like so:

script/generate has_roles

Then simply migrate your database:

rake db:migrate

To add permissions, you can create an initializer like so:

config/initializers/permissions.rb:

Permission.bootstrap(
  {:id => 1, :controller => 'application'},
  {:id => 2, :controller => 'admin/stats'},
  {:id => 3, :controller => 'comments', :action => 'create'},
  ...
)

To add / update roles, you can create an initializer like so:

config/initializers/roles.rb:

Role.bootstrap(
  {:id => 1, :name => 'admin'},
  {:id => 2, :name => 'developer'},
  ...
)

RolePermission.bootstrap(
  {:role => 'admin', :permission => 'application/'},
  {:role => 'admin', :permission => 'admin/states/'},
  {:role => 'developer', :permission => 'comments/create'},
  {:role => 'developer', :permission => 'admin/stats/'},
  ...
)

Below is an example of checking a user’s authorization for a url before displaying information:

app/views/layouts/application.rhtml:

<% if authorized_for?(:controller => 'admin/users') %>
<p>Read to start administering your website?</p>
<% end %>

Before you can run any tests, the following gem must be installed:

• plugin_test_helper

To run against a specific version of Rails:

rake test RAILS_FRAMEWORK_ROOT=/path/to/rails

• Rails 2.3 or later

• enumerate_by 0.4.0 or later