setting up user roles within cancan

Question

I am new to Rails and am having troubles figuring out how to create user roles and then have it working with Cancan. I am following rails cast on this and the cancan wiki. What I don't understand to do is define each user role, for example what the admin, registered member and guest can access. I'm not sure if I'm on the right path or not with my coding. I have also run into a "undefined local variable or method `roles_mask'" error.

I don't believe I have the roles set proper in the below file. I have created user authentication from scratch if that helps any. The sections I have so far are galleries and user profile. ATM if I create a new account and select drop down box option "admin", I don't have any admin powers. I am still lock out of accessing pages.

ability.rb

class Ability
  include CanCan::Ability

  def initialize(user)
    user ||= User.new # guest user

    if @user && @user.role?(:admin)
      can :manage, :all
    else
      can :read, :all 
    end

    if user.role? :user
      can :manage, Profile
    end

    if user.role? :admin
      can :manage, Profile
    end
  end
end

user.rb

  ROLES = %w[admin user guest banned]

  def roles=(roles)
    self.roles_mask = (roles & ROLES).map { |r| 2**ROLES.index(r) }.sum
  end

  def roles
    ROLES.reject { |r| ((roles_mask || 0) & 2**ROLES.index(r)).zero? }
  end

  def role?(role)
    roles.include? role.to_s
  end

zkcro zkcro · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-08T03:29:44

In your ability.rb file,

if @user && @user.role?(:admin)

should probably be

if user && user.role?(:admin)

setting up user roles within cancan

1 Answers