Question

I have a Rails app that uses activescaffold and I would like to hide some fields on the update for some of the records.

I have been trying to do it using helper methods, but I can not seem to get that to work.

What is the best way to do this?

Answer 1

The best way to do this is by using one of the security method templates (depending on your need) provided by activescaffold plugin.

Pasted from activescaffold wiki:

Model Methods: Restricting Anything
Else

On your model object you may define
methods (none of which accept any
arguments) in any of four formats,
depending on your need for
granularity.

The formats are:

* #{column_name}_authorized_for_#{crud_type}?

For example if you have an activescaffold based controller called user:

class Admin::UsersController < ApplicationController
  active_scaffold do |config|
    config.columns = [:username, :name, :email]
  end
end

And you only want to allow the user to be able to update the username if they are admin then you can do something like this:

User Model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  # ActiveScaffold security template: #{column_name}_authorized_for_#{crud_type}?
  def username_authorized_for_update?
    # As soon as this method will return false 
    # the username field will not be available on the update form
    return true # Write logic to decide if username field should be visible
  end
end

Active Scaffold wiki link: https://github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold/wiki/Security