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

To install as a 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 %>

Copyright © 2009 Cyril Wack, released under the MIT license