Assign roles to users, accounts, user_accounts, and other models in a Ruby on Rails application.

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add RubyRoles

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install RubyRoles

class MyModel < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_ruby_roles
  roles :sysadmin, :syssupport # , ... << # NOTE: Never remove entries, never reorder entries, always add to the end of the list only
end

The default field used to store the roles is named "roles_mask", and it should be defined in the ActiveRecord migration like so:

  def change
    create_table :my_models do |t|
      # ...
      t.integer :roles_mask, default: 0, null: false
      # ...
    end
  end

or, after the table was previous created:

  def change
    add_column :my_models, :roles_mask, :integer, default: 0, null: false
  end

If you want to change the name of the field, simply specify the field name in the acts_as_ruby_roles call in the model:

class MyModel < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_ruby_roles field_name: :my_alternate_roles_field_name
  roles :sysadmin, :syssupport, :viewonly # , ... << # NOTE: Never remove entries, never reorder entries, always add to the end of the list only
end

Once you have this defined, you will have methods like the following available to you:

user = User.first
user.is_sysadmin?
user.is_syssupport?
user.is_viewonly?

To set the roles, use:

user = User.first
user.roles= [:sysadmin]
user.roles= [:sysadmin,:syssupport]
user.roles= [:sysadmin,:viewonly]
user.save!

And all the roles can be read by:

user = User.first
user.roles => [:sysadmin,:syssupport,...]
user.save!

In the database, roles are stored as integers. The values will return true or false depending on if the specified bit is set in the integer roles_mask for the model instance. The bits are defined sequentially in the "roles" call. So, in this example, :sysadmin is the 0th bit (integer value 1), and :syssupport is the 1st bit (integer value 2), and :viewonly is the 2nd bit (integer value 4).

An instance can be multiple roles by bit-wise ORing the values together.

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/leeatchison/RubyRoles.

To build a new gem (authorized deployers only can do the push):

gem build RubyRoles.gemspec
gem push RubyRoles-#.#.#.gem