Update: new controller methods inspired by Nicolás Sanguinetti

All to often Controllers verify if a certain user can say “create or edit a resource”, which at first seems to be a natural place for this kind of logic, but alas it is not!

When building your views you need access to the same knowledge, if the user can edit this movie, show the edit link.

Is it mine?

At first i solved this with a simple is_mine?(obj) on the user, and let the user decide if he can edit a record.

def is_mine?(obj)
  case obj
    when Movie then obj.id == id
    when Participation then obj.movie.id == id
   .....
end

Can i read/write it ?

But this still left too much logic for my helpers and controllers, so i added another bit: read/write, where a new User symbolizes no user, so user.can_write?(obj) returns false if it is a new_record.

  def can_read?(obj)
    raise "new objects cannot be read" if obj.new_record? #new_records can only be created, never viewed...
    case obj
      when Address,Order,OrderItem #not readable by others/public
        is_mine?(obj) #i can read an order/address if it is mine
      else not new_record?#only a logged in user can read something...
    end
  end

  def can_write?(obj)
    ...
  end

Controller-logic be gone!

Now in my controller i use can_read for show, can_write for edit/update/create/new/destroy, which i inherit on all controllers.

before_filter :can_read, :only => [:show]
before_filter :can_write, :only => [:destroy,:update,:edit,:new,:create]

def can_write
  access_denied unless can_write?(requested_object)
end

def can_write?(object)
  user = current_user || User.new
  user.can_write?(object)
end
helper_method :can_write?

The magic starts in requested_object: Create a new object of the current controller class, or find it by id. This can be a bit tricky with nested resources, but can be as simple as (see below) with make_resourceful.

  def requested_object
    case params[:action]
      when 'new','create' then build_object
      else current_object
    end
  end

Clean Tests

Testing, once cumbersome “get :new, response.should”-madness now looks like this, which is orders of magnitude faster, easier to write and more fun to read.

  it "reads/writes movies" do
    #changeable by owner
    can_read_and_write(@owner,@movie)
    can_read_not_write(@other,@movie)
    can_write(@owner,Movie.new)
    cannot_read_and_write(@no_user,@movie)
    cannot_write(@no_user,Movie.new)
  end
...
  def can_read(user,item)
    user.can_read?(item).should be_true
  end
...

When your helpers use each other, or your view tests use many, it gets frustrating to include them by hand…
This will load all helpers from app/helpers dir and include them!
Happy, stress-free testing!

def include_helpers
  Dir.glob("#{RAILS_ROOT}/app/helpers/*_helper.rb").each do |file|
    helper = File.basename(file).sub('.rb','').camelcase.constantize
    include helper
  end
end

Your Controller/View/Helper test would look like this:

describe MoviesHelper do
  include_helpers
  ...
end

Getting all other helpers(e.g. from helpers/admin is more complicated, but surely possible…)