Rails, devise, acl - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have followed this tut http://railsapps.github.com/tutorial-rails-bootstrap-devise-cancan.html I want to do something like this:
before_filter :authenticate_user!
before_filter :authenticate_VIP!
before_filter :authenticate_admin!
before_filter :authenticate_somerole!
I have tables: roles, users, user_roles and I don't want to create another table (rails g devise VIP create another table).
I want to have methods authenticate_ROLE. How to do this ?

Answer 1

I have three table, Users, Roles, and RoleRelationships (or role_users, it's up to you)
This is my Role table:
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :name
has_many :role_relationships
has_many :users, through: :role_relationships
end
Role table will have name column for roles, like: "admin", "teacher", "vip" (as you want).
And this is User table:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
devise ...
has_many :role_relationships
has_many :roles, through: :role_relationships
end
and my RoleRelationship table:
class RoleRelationship < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_protected :role_id, :user_id
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :role
end
I set up my app one user can have many roles, you can set up your way. So, i have a role?(role) method in my user.rb, like this:
def role?(role)
return role == RoleRelationship.find_by_user_id(self.id).role.name
end
Then in my abilities files, i define abilities of users:
def initialize(user)
user ||= User.new # guest user
if user.role? "teacher"
can :read, Course
can :manage, Topic, user_id: user.id
can :create, Topic
else user.role? "admin"
can :manage, Course
end
So, teacher will only read Course, and admin can CRUD Course. To do that, i use method load_and_authorize_resource in my CoursesController:
class CoursesController < ApplicationController
load_and_authorize_resource
before_filter :authenticate_user!
...
end
Finally, in my views, i used code like this:
<% if can? manage, #course %>
Only admin can work, see what happen here.
<% end %>
So, as you see, teacher only can read Course so they can't see or do what admin can do, in this case, is create course or edit course.
This is what i built in my online test app, you can reference and do the same for your app.