ACLatraz: Redis-powered access control for your ruby apps

Authentication options get a lot of press these days, but there is another Auth that can still be a pain: Authorization. ACLatraz from Kriss Kowalik caught our eye because it’s inspired by *nix Access Control Lists (ACLs), powered by Redis, and has a sense of humor.

Install ACLatraz via Ruby gems

gem install aclatraz

and configure your Redis-based storage

Aclatraz.init :redis, "redis://localhost:6379/0"

Everyone is a Suspect

In keeping with the Alcatraz theme, actors in your authorization system are deemed Suspects:

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Aclatraz::Suspect
end

ACLatraz supports global, class-related, and object-related roles:

# global admin role
@account.roles.assign(:admin) # or ...
@account.is.admin!

# Page class-related role
@account.roles.assign(:responsible, Page) # or...
@account.is.responsible_for!(Page)

# object-related role for page 15
@account.roles.assign(:author, Page.find(15)) # or...
@account.is.author_of!(Page.find(15))

Once, assigned you can interrogate your suspects a couple of ways using has?

@account.roles.has?(:admin)                # => true
@account.roles.has?(:responsible, Page)     # => true
@account.roles.has?(:author, Page.find(15) # => true

… or the more natural semantic shortcuts:

@account.is_not.admin?                      # => false
@account.is_not.responsible_for?(Page)       # => false

Guarding The Rock

To enable access control on an object, include the Aclatraz::Guard module:

class Page
  include Aclatraz::Guard

  suspects :account do
    deny all # notice that it's a method, not symbol
    allow :admin
  end
end

Check the README for even more features including custom actions, aliases, and class inheritance.

[Source on GitHub]