authorise view user to not access some pages in rails4 app by using cancancan

Question

Am using Devise for authentication and cancancan for authorization.Now i want to not allow the view user for some pages. So i add following codes. But it throws undefined local variable or method `current_user' for # error.

My ability.rb

class Ability
  include CanCan::Ability

  def initialize(dashboard_user)

       current_dashboard_user ||= DashboardUser.new 
       if current_dashboard_user.CD_DASHBOARD_ADMIN?
         can :manage, :all
       else
         can :read, :summary
         can :read, :home
       end
      .........
  end

Application_controller.rb

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  protect_from_forgery with: :exception
  before_action :configure_permitted_parameters, if: :devise_controller?

  before_action :authenticate_dashboard_user!

  protected
   rescue_from CanCan::AccessDenied do |exception|
    redirect_to main_app.root_url, :alert => exception.message
  end
  ....
end

dashboard_user_controller.rb

class DashboardUsersController < ApplicationController
  before_action :set_dashboard_user, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]

  load_and_authorize_resource
  ....
end

Answer 1

Okey, just do this trick for now. Somehow the current_user helper method is being called. So the quickest solution would be if you can do the following.

In your application_controller.rb file put this block:

   def current_user
    current_dashboard_user
   end

  # method_alias :current_user=, current_user # you may need this line if required.
   helper_method: :current_user

I hope this will help.