Trusted Params

Rails plugin which adds a convenient way to override attr_accessible protection.

If you are unfamiliar with the dangers of mass assignment please check these links

• railspikes.com/2008/9/22/is-your-rails-application-safe-from-mass-assignment
• railscasts.com/episodes/26-hackers-love-mass-assignment

Install

You can install this as a plugin into your Rails app.

  script/plugin install git://github.com/ryanb/trusted-params.git

Features

This plugin does several things.

• Adds "trust" method on hash to bypass attribute protection
• Disables attr_protected because you should use attr_accessible.
• Requires attr_accessible be specified in every model
• Adds :all as option to attr_accessible to allow all attributes to be mass-assignable
• Raises an exception when assigning a protected attribute (instead of just a log message)

Usage

When using this plugin, you must define attr_accessible in every model to allow mass assignment. You can use :all to mark all attributes as accessible.

  class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
    attr_accessible :all
  end

However, only do this if you want all attributes accessible to the public. Many times you will want to limit what the general public can set.

  class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
    attr_accessible :author_name, :email, :content
  end

Administrators should be able to bypass the protected attributes and set anything. This can be done with the "trust" method.

  def create
    params[:comment].trust if admin?
    @comment = Comment.new(params[:comment])
    # ...
  end

You can mark certain attributes as trusted for different roles

  params[:comment].trust(:spam, :important) if moderator?

Then only those attributes will be allowed to bypass mass assignment.