# Simple ACL's

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-acls/99210>\
**Category:** Engines\
**Created:** [January 31, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-acls/99210 "2006-01-31T03:04:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Vincent\_AE\_Scott](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/6bbea6/32.png) [@Vincent\_AE\_Scott](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Vincent_AE_Scott)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 3:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-acls/99210/1 "2006-01-31T03:04:39Z")

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Hello all,

I’ve been using LoginEngine and UserEngine in an app I’m developing and  
I’ve reached a stage where I’d like to be able to provide more granular  
filtering possibilities. At the moment I’m not quite sure how to go  
about the actual filtering of results from .find\*, but that can wait  
until later on. What I want to get started on is providing Groups which  
can be assigned a Permission. These Groups are functionally similar to  
the Roles in UE, with the difference that any user can create their own  
set of groups ( assigning users and permissions etc ). The Permissions  
are also similar to those in UE, except they aren’t tied to a  
particular controller/action.

I’m wondering what the best way might be to achieve this, i see a couple  
of options:

1. create a new engine and base it off UserEngine but changed to suit my  
needs.

2. write some classes/modules to fit in between LoginEngine and  
UserEngine, that UE can then be layered on top of while also providing  
the framework to accomplish my ACL goals.

3. override UserEngine and add on the extra bits necessary.

As I’m a noob when it comes to ruby/rails, option 1 seems like the  
easiest option to start with, but 2 seems like the better longer term  
solution.

Apologies for not elaborating further, it’s late here and i just wanted  
to bang this out before turning in. If anyone’s got any suggestions or  
questions, fire away 🙂

Oh, and second appolgies if this should have gone to the Dev list.

-vince

–

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it  
– George Santayana

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Vincent\_AE\_Scott](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/6bbea6/32.png) [@Vincent\_AE\_Scott](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Vincent_AE_Scott)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 7:26am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/simple-acls/99210/2 "2006-01-31T07:26:13Z")

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I would recommend taking the UserEngine and using that as a foundation  
and  
customizing it to suit your needs.

A lot of people are interested in this granularity, so having a new  
project  
which potentially offers that to the community would be great. And I  
imagine  
after doing that much customization, putting a layer between the login  
and  
user engines might be more work than its actually worth long term. From  
a  
implementers perspective, they would have to install a third engine in  
order  
to get the functionality.

If any new features were introduced into the user or login engine you  
would  
have to rewrite the integration, and to be honest they are geared to be  
a  
starting point.

James and I have discussed introducing versioning and dependencies into  
the  
engine schema, but until that is ironed out, and a beta is ready having  
the  
any such core dependencies on engines is going to get a bit messy.  
Especially with the user engine already depending on the login engine.  
To  
add the third tier to that, it seems like overkill.

-Nb

```auto
 Nathaniel S. H. Brown http://nshb.net

```