manage roles in rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I want create roles in my project. Each user can be: admin, registered or demo. Each role see different things.
How can I do that? What is the best gem to do roles?
This is a example in 'bad programming" of what I want:
def index
if current_user.role[:name] == 'admin'
#installations = Installation.all
elsif current_user.role[:name] == 'registered'
#installations = current_user.installations
elsif current_user.role[:name] == 'demo'
#installations = current_user.installations.first
else
end
end

Answer 1

Some gems that might be interesting for you :
rolify
role_model
If you decide to implement it yourself, then within some page you might want to change the content, for that you might want to do something like this :
Add a role to the user model using a migration :
class AddRoleToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :users, :role, :string, default: :demo
end
end
Then in your app you can use it as follows:
def index
case current_user.role
when :admin
#installations = Installation.all
when :registered
#installations = current_user.installations
else
#installations = current_user.installations.first
end
end
You can also simply create a boolean admin for instance.
What you might want to do also is create some methods in your model so that you can call current_user.admin? or current_user.registered? . You can do that by doing (if you chose to use a string to store the role):
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
def admin?
self.role == "admin"
end
def registered?
self.role == "registered"
end
end
One advantage I see of having a role stored in a string is that if you have 5 roles for instance then you do not have 4 booleans (as when you store admin in a boolean) but only one string. On the long run you might want to store actually a role_id instead of a string and have a separate role model.
An excellent alternative pointed out by Jorge de Los Santos (another answer) is to use enum :
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
enum role: [:demo, :admin, :registered]
end
It is an excellent alternative because it will automagically add the methods described above such as current_user.admin? without hard coding them.
With your roles, you might want to do some authorization (admins can have access to specific pages, demo users are restricted to only a subset of pages, etc.). For this, you can use the gem called cancancan. You can look at this railscast to learn more about it. Also, you can have some infos here : How to use cancancan? .

Answer 2

There are plenty of solutions available to you.
Starting by gems:
https://github.com/RolifyCommunity/rolify
https://github.com/martinrehfeld/role_model
By using Devise architecture (in case you use it):
https://github.com/plataformatec/devise/wiki/How-To:-Add-a-default-role-to-a-User
By using enums in rails 4:
class AddRolesToUser < ActiveRecord::Migration
#add_column 'role', :integer, default: 0 to the users table
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
enum role: [:demo, :admin, :registered]
end
That will enable role methods.
user = User.find(1)
user.role #:demo
user.admin? #false
user.registered? #false
And consequently:
if user.admin?
#somethig
elsif user.registered?
#another something
else
#another another something.
And last but not least, what you are searching is not the manage roles solution, is the manage permissions solutions:
https://github.com/ryanb/cancan

Answer 3

Add a boolean, :admin to your User model.
class AddAdminToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :users, :admin, :boolean, deafult: false
end
end
Create a method for a registered user to separate them from demo users, such as verifying their email, providing a home address and phone number, filling out a profile, etc. This is up to you though, first you need to decide how a registered and demo user should be different.

Answer 4

The CanCan gem adds authorization to your project, and is especially useful if you want to implement multiple roles with differing abilities. When used with an authentication system like devise, you get a full suite of capability for your site.
You're in full control of what roles you want to define and what abilities they have. CanCan manages tracking, assignment, and querying of roles, and then gets out of your way to let you build what you need.
You can find the CanCan gem in Github: https://github.com/ryanb/cancan
It's simple to use, and the documentation is straightforward and easy to follow.