Rails 4 authorization gem
authorization, ruby-on-rails-4
Solution
CanCanCan
CanCan was a popular gem for authorization developed by Ryan Bates (best known for RailsCasts) and abandoned prior to the release of Rails 4.0. Due to its popularity, the community-based CanCanCan project maintains an updated version of CanCan. CanCan provides a DSL (domain-specific language) that isolates all authorization logic in a single Ability class.
Pundit
The Pundit gem is gaining in popularity for Rails authorization. Pundit is an authorization system that uses simple Ruby objects for access rules. Pundit uses a folder named app/policies/ containing plain Ruby objects that implement access rules.
CanCanCan or Pundit or ?
As an application grows in complexity, the CanCan Ability class can grow unwieldy. Also, every authorization request requires evaluation of the full CanCan Ability class, adding performance overhead. Pundit also offers the advantage of segregating access rules into a central location, keeping controllers skinny. Pundit policy objects are lightweight, adding authorization logic without as much overhead as CanCan.
Simple Role-Based Authorization
With Rails 4.1, you can implement role-based authorization using Active Record Enum. You can use CanCanCan or Pundit to keep controllers skinny if your access rules are complex but for simple requirements, you may not need CanCanCan or Pundit.
I've written an article on Rails Authorization that goes into more detail, comparing CanCanCan and Pundit and simple role-based authorization.
Problem
I am looking an authorization gem for rails 4. Before I used cancan, but it looks outdated nowadays... I found the_role here https://github.com/the-teacher/the_role It is nearly what I want, but has a few annoying issues. Maybe similar gems exist? I need roles, store roles in database and association actions with rules. It wound be great if gem cooperate with bootstrap. P.S. For authentication I use devise.