Rails 4 Mass Assignment Whitelisting Parameters for Admin User

Question

I've been looking around and trying to see how I would handle mass-assignment with Rails 4. I know this question has been beaten to death, but from my search, I've only come across answers that require the protected_attributes gem and attr_accessible. Now I'm not sure if that is still the industry standard on this, so I wanted to ask.

I'm using Rails 4.0.1 and I am trying to figure out how I can limit specific parameter updates to admin accounts only.

Here are the parameters: :title, :summary, :content, :status

Now when a user creates a post, they can only update the following attributes: :title, :summary, :content

However, if an admin updates the post, they are able to update :title, :summary, :content AND :status

post_controller.rb

  def create
    @post = Post.new(post_params)
    @post.status = 'pending'

    respond_to do |format|
      if @post.save
        PostMailer.new_post(@post).deliver
        format.html { redirect_to @post, notice: 'Post was successfully submitted.' }
        format.json { render action: 'show', status: :created, location: @post }
      else
        format.html { render action: 'new' }
        format.json { render json: @post.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  def update
    @categories = Category.all    
    respond_to do |format|
      @post.slug = nil
      if params[:post][:featured]
        @image = Imgurruby::Imgur.new('20e2a9ef8542b15873a0dfa7502df0b5')
        @image.upload(params[:post][:featured])
        params[:post][:featured] = @image.url.to_s
      end      
      if @post.update(post_params)
        expire_fragment(@post)
        @post.friendly_id
        format.html { redirect_to @post, notice: 'Post was successfully updated.' }
        format.json { head :no_content }
      else
        format.html { render action: 'edit' }
        format.json { render json: @post.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end
  end

  def post_params
    params.require(:post).permit(:title, :summary, :category, :tags, :content, :user_id, :category_id, :slug, :featured, :views)
  end

Would I be right in assuming that the best way would be to use an operator in the post_params method to check if the user is an admin, and if so, permit a different set of parameters?

Answer 1

of course, you can use different sets of parameters for different users or for different actions. you would do something like:

def update
  if user.is_a? Admin
    @post.update(post_params_admin)
   else
    @post.update(post_params_user)
  end

end

def post_params_user
   params.require(:post).permit(:title, :summary, :category, :content)
end

def post_params_admin
   params.require(:post).permit(:title, :summary, :category, :tags, :content, :user_id, :category_id, :slug, :featured, :views)
end