Acts as permission

This Rails plugin provides a list of permissions attached to a resource, according to ACL concept. Permissions determine specific access rights for a resource depending of its controller actions such as: show, edit, update, destroy, evaluated from the given resource and such as: index, new, create, evaluated from the parent of the given resource.

Each permission field attributed to a resource can be defined as true, false or nil. When a resource permission is set as nil, the same permission is searched from its nearest relative to its parent farthest and the first given boolean value is returned. If permission is nil for a resource and its potential parents, then the method returns false.

Install

Install the gem (recommended):

sudo gem install acts_as_permission

Alternatively, you can install it as a Rails plugin:

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

Generate and apply the migration:

script/generate acts_as_permission model
rake db:migrate

Example

script/generate acts_as_permission Category
script/generate acts_as_permission Article show edit update destroy
rake db:migrate

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_permission
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :articles
end

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_permission :category
  belongs_to :category
  belongs_to :user
end

# Check permission to list articles of the given category:
@category.has_permission?('index')

# Check permission to destroy the given article:
@article.has_permission?('destroy')

# Form helper that generate permissions fields for each article:
<%= permission_fields :article %>