acts_as_authoritah¶ ↑

INSTALLATION

gem install acts_as_authoritah

Rails 2.* Add in environemnt.rb

config.gem 'acts_as_authoritah'

Rails 3.* Add in Gemfile

gem 'acts_as_authoritah'

A sample blogging app.¶ ↑

- Creating blog posts.
- Editing blog posts.
- Commenting on blog posts.

A blog post when first created will be in unpublished state. The post can be published later.

User Roles and capabilities.

• Author

  He can create blog posts
  He can edit posts
  He can view blog posts
  He cannot add comments
  

• Registered user (who has signed up and logged-in)

  He can view blog posts
  He can comment on blog posts
  He cannot create blog posts
  He cannot edit blog posts
  

• anonymous user

  He can view blog posts
  He cannot add comments
  He cannot create blog posts
  He cannot edit blog posts
  

• admin

  unrestricted access to everything.

When post is unpublished

• Logged-in user (who has signed up)

  He cannot comment on blog posts
  He cannot view blog posts.

Getting this done with ActsAsAuthoritah¶ ↑

1. Create an excel sheet (or download a sample github.com/bangthetable/acts_as_authoritah/blob/master/sample/default.xls) and save it at config/acl/default.xls. When the post is unpublished, there are two rules which are different from the default set of rules. We need to add these two rules alone in config/acl/unpublished.xls github.com/bangthetable/acts_as_authoritah/blob/master/sample/unpublished.xls

2. Add the following line to your User model (or to whichever is your equivalent of User model)

   acts_as_authoritah :acl_folder => File.join(RAILS_ROOT,"config","acl")
   

3. Add ‘include ActsAsAuthoritah’ in ApplicationController

4. ActsAsAuthoritah needs a wrapper around your ‘current_user’ method (name may differ based on the authentication system you use), to make it return an empty User object when user is not logged in.

   A sample -

   def present_user
     current_user.to_s == "false" ? User.new : current_user
   end
   

5. In your User model, you need to define a ‘usertype’ method which should return the role of that user (same as in the first row of the spreadsheet).

   A sample -

   def usertype(args={})
     return role.name if role
     return "anonymous" if new_record?
     return "registered"
   end
   

   Implementation of usertype method can vary, based on the role-system you are following. Just make sure it always returns role of the user (string), which should match with the roles specified in the first row of the spreadsheet.

6. in Post model

   def status
     published? ? nil : 'unpublished'
   end
   

   This will be used to let authoritah know when a post in in unpublished state, so that authoritah can override the default rules with those in unpublished.xls

7. For access control of methods in PostController and CommentController, put these two files in lib/access_control/ github.com/bangthetable/acts_as_authoritah/blob/master/sample/comment_controller_access.rb github.com/bangthetable/acts_as_authoritah/blob/master/sample/post_controller_access.rb

8. To make sure that links are shown only to appropriate users, add lines like these in in the views.

   <% if present_user.can_post_a_comment?(:context => @post.status) %>
   <%= link_to 'Add a comment', {:controller => 'comment', :action => 'new', :post_id => @post.id} %>
   <% end%>

9. Thats all - your application is access controlled by ActsAsAuthoritah now.

   • You can grant/revoke access to different features to different roles just by editing the spreadsheets.

   • You can add a new user-role by adding a column in the spreadsheets.

   • If your application needs to have one more context (say, archived posts), you can do that by adding one more spreadsheet called archived.xls.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests¶ ↑

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but

  bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright¶ ↑

Copyright © 2010 Bang The Table. See LICENSE for details.