Defining Abilities with Blocks

If Defining Abilities with Hashes is not flexible enough for your needs, it is possible to use a block. Here you can use any Ruby code to restrict what the user is able to access.

can :update, Project do |project|
  project && project.groups.include?(user.group)
end

If the block returns true then the user has that :update ability for that project, otherwise he will be denied access. It's possible for the passed in model to be nil if one isn't specified, so be sure to take that into consideration.

The downside to using a block is that it cannot be used when Fetching Records. But you could specify raw SQL condition in addition to block (development version):

can :update, Project, ['projects.id in (select gp.project_id 
                                        from groups_projects gp
                                        where gp.group_id = ?)', user.group_id] do |project|
  project && project.groups.include?(user.group)
end

If :all is passed then the class will be passed into the block along with the object (just in case the object is nil). Here the user has permission to read all objects except orders.

can :read, :all do |object_class, object|
  object_class != Order
end

If :manage is used then the action is passed into the block as well. Here the user can do everything but destroy comments.

can :manage, Comment do |action, comment|
  action != :destroy
end

If you use both :manage and :all with a block you will have complete flexibility in how permissions are handled. See Abilities in Database for an example.

If additional arguments are passed to the can? method, those arguments will be passed into the block as well. This is useful for passing additional information about the request.

# in controller or view
can? :read, article, request.remote_ip

# in ability
can :read, Article do |article, remote_ip|
  # ...
end

See Accessing Request Data for an alternative solution.