SHShirsenduK·Feb 22, 2016
Cancancan is one best tools to do this in Ruby. Maybe its DSL-like syntax will give you better ideas.
https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
In Ask HN: What are the best practices for web authorization at the moment?coorasse
cancancan
Ruby2014–2016
coorasse / cancancan
cancancan
The authorization Gem for Ruby on Rails.
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7Mentions
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The authorization Gem for Ruby on Rails.
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by month7 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2014-03-20 17:54:56 UTC to 2016-02-22 17:02:46 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 2014 | 2014-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Apr 2014 | 2014-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| May 2014 | 2014-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2014 | 2014-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| Jul 2014 | 2014-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2014 | 2014-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2014 | 2014-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2014 | 2014-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2014 | 2014-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2014 | 2014-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2015 | 2015-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2015 | 2015-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2015 | 2015-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2015 | 2015-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2015 | 2015-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2015 | 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2015 | 2015-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2015 | 2015-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2015 | 2015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2015 | 2015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Dec 2015 | 2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2016 | 2016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
7 sourcesthere is a community maintained fork https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
In Role-based authorization in RailsThe community revived it
https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
In Role-based authorization in RailsI've been using the CanCan(Can) gem to handle all permissions logic, both in controllers and views. It abstracts all user state logic to a single file https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
I find this pattern to be the most manageable especially in large projects.
But I agree with your point. "if current_user" is miles better than "if current_user.name != 'Guest'".
Edited to add:
As far as this articles use of current_user.name being guest, it makes sense to use a presenter to display the data in the view. Conditionally displaying a user name or 'Guest' in a view is kinda gross. Again I'll suggest a gem for this pattern https://github.com/drapergem/draper
All objects coming into the view should be wrapped, especially and ActiveRecord objects.
In 10 Most Common Rails MistakesCanCanCan – Continuation of CanCan, the authorization Gem for Ruby on Rails.
49 points · Open discussionCheck out https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan, the continuation of the cancan gem.
In Rails 4.1.0 releasedI would use CanCan ability.rb file for that: https://github.com/CanCanCommunity/cancancan
In Rails – The Missing Parts – Policies