Recommended way of restricting action permissions?

Rails
1

Hi, I just have a “best practices” question. I’d like to block users
that don’t own a particular resource from performing edit/update/
destroy actions on it. Here’s how I currently do it:

User has many resources, of different types

------- resource_controller.rb -------

before_filter :require_ownership, :only => [:edit, :update, :destroy]

… public actions …

protected

def require_ownership
@resource = Resource.find(params[:id])
redirect_to_somewhere unless owns?(@resource)
end

------- application.rb -------

def owns?(resource)
resource.user_id == @current_user.id
end

… And I apply this before_filter in the controller of any resource
I’d like to restrict in a similar way. I’m new to Rails and MVC so
I’m just wondering whether this is the best way of accomplishing this,
or if a different method is recommended.

Thanks in advance!

2

Ms. Klein,

I handle that situation very similarly with the only disparity being
where ownership is determined. In my opinion the object itself should
know nothing about @current_user, whereas the application can know about
Resource.user.

I also tend to alias methods in my resources, like so

def self.owner
self.user
end

Then I insure that every object has some owner alias if it is to be
restricted, and in my :require_ownership before_filter, I do the
following:

def require_ownership
if @resource.owner == @current.user …
end

The end effect is the same, but this allows the resource to be used
intact in another application without modification, regardless of
@current_user in the other application. Just of matter of who knows
what about whom.

Otherwise, unless someone can suggest a better method for us both, I
personally think you’re on the right track.

Cheers,
Darrik Mazey

Lisa Klein wrote:

… public actions …
def owns?(resource)

–
Darrik Mazey
Developer
DMT Programming, LLC.
P.O. Box 91
Torrington, CT 06790
office: 330.983.9941
fax: 330.983.9942
mobile: 330.808.2025
[email protected]

To obtain my public key, send an email to
[email protected].

3

The simpler way is just search the user resources when performing an
edit/update/delete. like this:

def edit
@resource = @user.resources.find(params[:id])
end

This way you can be sure that the user will not be able to select a
resource that doesn’t belong to him.

Maurício Linhares
http://alinhavado.wordpress.com/ (pt-br) | http://blog.codevader.com/
(en)

4

Thanks a lot for the replies! I guess I kind of prefer the
before_filter method a little bit because then I don’t have to
replicate the redirect_if_not_found logic in each restricted action.
Thanks again!