has_roles

has_roles demonstrates a reference implementation for handling role management.

Resources

API

• api.pluginaweek.org/has_roles

Bugs

• pluginaweek.lighthouseapp.com/projects/13277-has_roles

Development

• github.com/pluginaweek/has_roles

Source

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

Description

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.

Usage

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

Adding permissions

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'},
    ...
  )

Adding / Updating roles

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/'},
    ...
  )

Checking a user’s authorization

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 %>

Testing

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

Dependencies

• Rails 2.3 or later
• enumerate_by 0.4.0 or later