Easy Roles
Simple rails gem for basic role authorization with ruby on rails.
Changelog
08 December 2009 - Version 0.4.0
Added the ability to use bitmasks instead of serializing the roles in a table
17 November 2009 - Version 0.3.0
Added a generator to generate the database columns “script/generate easy_roles Table Column_Name”
21 October 2009 - Version 0.2.0
Added bang methods for ‘add_role’ and ‘remove_role’ which can be accessed through ‘add_role!’ and ‘remove_role!’ respectively.
Install
gem install gemcutter
gem tumble
gem install easy_roles
or it can be installed as a rails plugin.
script/plugin install git://github.com/platform45/easy_roles.git
Basic Setup
Serialize Method
Add the following to your enviroment.rb in the rails initializer block
config.gem 'easy_roles', :source => 'http://gemcutter.org'
(from version 0.3.0) use the migration generator
script/generate easy_roles user roles
Or add a “roles” column to your users model, and set the default value to “— []”. Please note you can call this column anything you like, I like to use the name “roles”.
t.string :roles, :default => "--- []"
Then you need to add “easy_roles :column_name” to your model.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
easy_roles :roles
end
Bitmask Method
Add the following to your enviroment.rb in the rails initializer block
config.gem 'easy_roles', :source => 'http://gemcutter.org'
And thats it.
Usage
Easy roles extends your model, and adds a few methods needed for basic role authorization.
adding a role to a user
add_role 'role'
removing a role from a user
remove_role 'role'
check to see if a user has a certain role
has_role? 'role'
# or
is_role? # role being anything you like, for example 'is_admin?' or 'is_awesome?'
Examples
@user = User.first
@user.add_role 'admin'
@user.is_admin?
=> true
@user.has_role? 'admin'
=> true
@user.is_awesome?
=> false
@user.add_role 'awesome'
@user.is_awesome?
=> true
@user.remove_role 'admin'
@user.is_admin?
=> false
etc etc
Protecting controllers
There are many ways to implement views for specific roles, so I did not specifically supply one. Here’s an example on what you could do:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
def admin_required
unless current_user && current_user.is_admin?
flash[:error] = "Sorry, you don't have access to that."
redirect_to root_url and return false
end
end
end
Then in your AdminsController or any controller that you only want admins to view:
class AdminsController < ApplicationController
before_filter :admin_required
end
class MarksController < ApplicationController
before_filter :admin_required, :only => :create, :update
end
check out blog.platform45.com/2009/10/05/howto-basic-roles-for-users for implementation, and blog.platform45.com/2009/10/07/easy-roles-gem-released for usage.
License
Copyright © 2009 Platform45
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.