# Best authorization solution

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-authorization-solution/140146>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 11, 2008, 11:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-authorization-solution/140146 "2008-06-11T11:37:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![makire](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@makire](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/makire)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2008, 11:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-authorization-solution/140146/1 "2008-06-11T11:37:24Z")

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Hi everyone

I have now spent a great deal of time investigating on my own so now I  
will delegate the question to you. Which is the best solution for  
adding authorization/access control to a rails app. My requirements  
are:

- Must be group/role based. Structure:

- Active development. The project should be alive.

Gold star features:

- Cached/efficient queries.
- Fine grained access control to specific features on an instance.
- Some way of grouping target objects, for example "the  
fan\_mail\_reader role can read all mails that have the attribute  
fan\_mail == true. This can certainly be handled outside authorization  
but would be handy.

I think the whole community could benefit from a little light shedding  
on this area. There are many solutions out there, but many lack  
important features or are very outdated. The closest one in features  
in my opinion is ActiveACL but that is from 2005 and requires plugins  
that I cannot find anymore.

I have great hopes that someone can help me and others that are in the  
same situation.

Kindest regards

Erik L.