Active Model Mass-Assignment Security

Mass assignment security provides an interface for protecting attributes from end-user assignment. For more complex permissions, mass assignment security may be handled outside the model by extending a non-ActiveRecord class, such as a controller, with this behavior.

For example, a logged in user may need to assign additional attributes depending on their role:

  class AccountsController < ApplicationController
    include ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity

    attr_accessible :first_name, :last_name
    attr_accessible :first_name, :last_name, :plan_id, as: :admin

    def update
      ...
      @account.update_attributes(account_params)
      ...
    end

    protected

    def account_params
      role = admin ? :admin : :default
      sanitize_for_mass_assignment(params[:account], role)
    end

  end

Configuration options

• mass_assignment_sanitizer - Defines sanitize method. Possible values are:
  • :logger (default) - writes filtered attributes to logger
  • :strict - raise ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::Error on any protected attribute update.

You can specify your own sanitizer object eg. MySanitizer.new. See ActiveModel::MassAssignmentSecurity::LoggerSanitizer for example implementation.