Rails security: Avoiding mass-assignment altogether

I tend to not need the mass-assignment feature in my production code. (In my test code, I use it a lot, but in those cases I do want to set arbitrary columns.)

So if, in my production code, I simply avoid these forms:

Article.new(params[:article])  # or create
article.attributes = params[:article]
article.update_attributes(params[:article开发者_C百科])

and instead always manually enumerate all the attributes, like so:

Article.new(:title => params[:article][:title], :body => params[:article][:body], ...)

am I save from mass assignment security issues (even without using attr_accessible/attr_protected)?

Edit: The reason I'm not just disabling mass assignment is, I'd like to be able to write Article.create!(:blog_id => @blog.id, ...), where blog_id is an "unsave" attribute.

Yes, using the 2nd method, you're safe from users assigning to other attributes.

This is a DRYer way to write it, though:

Article.new(params[:article].slice(:title, :body))

-or-

def article_params
  params[:article].slice(:title, :body)
end

Article.new(article_params)  # or create
article.attributes = article_params
article.update_attributes(article_params)

Add this at the end of config/environments/production.rb :

ActiveRecord::Base.send(:attr_accessible, nil)

I could not get John Douthat's method working for multiple parameters, so I came up with the following alternative (taken from my CommentsController):

def set_params
  @comment.parent_id = params[:blog_comment][:parent_id] 
  @comment.ip_address = request.remote_ip
  @comment.commentator = current_user.username || "anonymous"
  @comment.name = params[:blog_comment][:name]
  @comment.email = params[:blog_comment][:email]
  @comment.url = params[:blog_comment][:url]
end

def create
  @comment = @post.comments.build(params[:blog_comment])
  set_params

  if @comment.save
  ...
end

def update
  @comment = Blog::Comment.find(params[:id])
  set_params

  if @comment.update_attributes(params[:blog_comment])
  ...
end