Rails 3: Add roles to a user

I'm using cancan as my authorization engine.

I already have the roles in user:

  ROLES = %w[admin normal author corp]

I also have methods to add and check roles:

#cancan
  def roles=(roles)
    self.roles_mask = (roles & ROLES).map { |r| 2**ROLES.index(r) }.sum
  end

  def roles
    ROLES.reject do |r|
      ((roles_mask || 0) & 2**ROLES.index(r)).zero?
    end
  end

  def is?(role)
    roles.include?(role.to_s)
  end

And I have # roles_mask :integer in the User model.

However, I want to开发者_StackOverflow社区 have a after_save :add_normal_role which assigns the normal role to the user.

Basically, I'm not being able (don't know) how to assign roles to each user.

This is what I have, which doesn't work:

private

  def add_normal_role
    self.roles=(ROLES[1])
  end

Thanks

You should try using a before_create callback ensuring the user has a normal role.

The problem with your current callback is since it's an after_save, your modifications aren't saved by default. (Saving in an after_save callback is a bad idea leading to infinite loops...) You could also use a before_save callback (with the same code you already have), which will also work.

However, since you really only need to add a normal role when the object is created (and not on every update), a before_create is better suited.