Acts as privilege

“Acts as” extension which provides the capabilities to restrict system access to authorized users. This ACL-based security model is designed as a role-based access control, where each role can be a group of users.

Install

To install as a plugin:

script/plugin install git://github.com/cyril/acts_as_privilege.git

Generate and apply the migration:

script/generate acts_as_privilege model
rake db:migrate

Then you can populate Ability and Entity models using something like that:

rest_actions = %w[index show new create edit update destroy]
controllers = {
  :groups => rest_actions,
  :users => rest_actions,
  :articles => rest_actions,
  :comments => rest_actions }

controllers.each_pair do |controller, actions|
  entity = Entity.create(:name => controller.to_s)
  actions.each do |action|
    Ability.create(:name => action, :entity_id => entity.id)
  end
end

Example

script/generate acts_as_privilege Group
rake db:migrate

class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_privilege
  has_many :users
end

# Check the current user capability to destroy articles:
current_user.group.has_privilege?('articles', 'destroy')

# Form helper that generate field to manage group privileges:
<%= privileges_field(@group, :group) %>