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Role-based authorization in Rails

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Re: Role-based authorization in Rails

#5
I like the approach to describe permissions but I also think that a good data model to sit behind this that includes roles and capabilities ultimately is needed in most applications. Users and use cases will almost always arise that require arbitrary roles with a mix of capabilities...

Re: Role-based authorization in Rails

#6
post #2

I think the pattern that needs to be explored is a rails engine that has a web interface to manage permissions for different models. Usually stakeholders want to control the roles and permissions.

We were recently working on designing a moderately complicated permissions system, and my impression is that it's impossible to create such a general-purpose engine and gem that covers enough of the cases that you'll have to manage, without creating something that is incredibly complicated to set up and manage. Except for a few standardized domains, you'll always have rules that are easier to express and maintain with some custom, domain-specific code.
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