BaseAuth
0.2.2
Now available as gem and Ruby 1.9 compatible.
Best Authorization System Ever
Installation
gem install base_auth
If you use bundler, just add that to your Gemfile:
gem "base_auth"
Authorization by Controller
Key concept
This plugin makes 2 assumptions:
-
you have a current_user method in your controller which returns the currently signed in user which you want to check authorization for.
-
you check authorization using instance methods of your user objects
This worked really well for me so far, so there’s a slight chance it will also work for you.
Using as a before filter
Simple example:
class ArticleController < ApplicationController
deny :user => :is_guest?
end
The above example will deny all guest access (will call current_user.is_guest? method to determine if the user is a guest or not). If you want to allow guests to list articles, but nothing more, use:
allow :index, :user => :is_guest?
or
allow :only => :index, :user => :is_guest?
if you want to allow every user who is guest OR admin, you’d go:
allow :index, :user => [ :is_guest?, :is_admin? ]
if you give an Array as :user value, at least one condition has to be met. For more sophisticated conditions you can pass a string, which will be instance_eval’d:
allow :index, :user => 'is_guest? or ( is_admin? and is_moderator? )'
Still, there are cases when you want to check something in the controller. In that case you can use :exec param instead of :user like this:
class ArticleController < ApplicationController
allow :exec => :check_auth
def check_auth
session[:allowed] == 'yes'
end
end
You can also pass a string, which will be eval’d, or a Proc, which will be called.
If you pass a method which accepts arguments, an object will be passed to it as a parameter. Which obejct? By default an instance variable named after singluarized controller name. So:
class ArticleController < ApplicationController
allow :edit, :update, :user => :owns?
end
Will call current_user.owns?( @article ) to check for permission. You can override this by passing :object argument, which can be a Symbol (naming instance variable to be used) or the object itself.
By default an Authorization::PermisionDenied exception will be raised. You can also use :method parameter to specify which method should be called instead or :redirect_to to redirect user instead.
With :message parameter you can pass a message that will be stored in exception.
Using in actions
In actions you can use allow!, deny!, allow? and deny? methods. The ones with ‘!’ will raise an exception, while the ones with ‘?’ will only return true or false:
def destroy
allow! :user => :owns?
@article.destroy
end
Using in views
You can use allow and deny methods in your views and pass them a block to execute:
<% allow :user => :is_admin? do %>
Only admins can see that!
<% end>
<% deny :user => :is_guest? do %>
You can't see it if you're a guest.
<% end %>
Authorization by model
Since version 0.2 the code has been modularized a bit and you can also authorize by model (single instance for now). It’s usage is dead easy and straightforward. You just have to implement authorize instance method in a given model (as a parameter it takes user to authorize against). You don’t even have to do it if you’re satisfied with default implementation (supplied with plugin):
def (user)
user.id == self.user_id
end
This method is used by authorize! instance method which works exactly like allow! - i.e. does nothing (returns the model) if authorized and throws Authorization::PermissionDenied if not authorized:
@item = ItemModel.find(35).(current_user) #throws an exception if current_user is not authorized
Notes
If you’re using rails older than 2.0 rescuing exceptions can be a pain. For rails 1.2 I recommend using exceptional plugin:
agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/exceptional
ToDo
-
add support for :if parameted (should behave like the one in validations)
-
make it possible to configure default behavior (so you don’t have to pass :method parameter everywhere if you always want to call a method instead of raising exception)
-
better documentation
-
model authorization: configuration of authorize! method to allow for redirection etc. (now it can only throw exceptions)
-
model authorization: authorize_for!(:actionname), i.e. let user define and use per-action authorization for a given model (different auth checks for different actions), by authorize_for_actionname methods in model
-
refactor the code structure (divide into three files)
Credits & Licensing
Copyright © by Robert Nasiadek at <[email protected]>. Maintenance and small modifications (model-based auth) by Tomasz Stachewicz <[email protected]>. Distributed under MIT license.
You can find more cool stuff by Aenima on our Github (github.com/aenima) and our blog (blog.aenima.pl/).