Question

My model includes an ‘admin’ field, which is true or false. It is not on ‘attr_accessible’ because we don’t want a bad guy to be able to trick our controller into giving ‘admin’ privs to a user.

Because, if I am logged in as an admin in my model, I ‘do’ want to be able to update any user’s record to make or take away admin from them. So… the lack of attr_accessible on admin prevents me from doing so.

Maybe that’s not the right way to look at it. What’s the right way to handle such a case?

Answer 1

Rails 3.2 added a feature that would allow you to do what you’re describing. Simply define this in your model:

attr_accessible accessible_attributes + [:admin], :as => :admin

And then in the controller where you want to assign the admin attribute, do this:

User.new(params[:user], :as => :admin)

or

user.update_attributes(params[:user], :as => :admin)

All the attributes that are listed prior to the attr_accessible call with :as => :admin will be accessible attributes for any Active Record call that supports the :as => :admin option.

If you didn’t call accessible_attributes in that definition, then only the attributes defined there will be accessible.