ActiveParams

Stop manually defining strong_parameters in each and every controller.

Whatever parameters that was used during development mode is considered permitted parameters for production. So automatically record them in development mode and simply apply strong_parameters in production.

aka No more strong parameters falls! 👌

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'active_params'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install active_params

Include the ActiveParams module into your controller, e.g.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include ActiveParams
end

During development mode, active_params will generate the appropriate strong parameters settings for each param (scoped to the current http method, controller_name and action_name)

For example, when you submit a form like this

Started POST "/users" for 127.0.0.1 at 2016-06-26 00:41:19 +0800
Processing by UsersController#create as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"...", "user"=>{"name"=>"John", "avatar"=>"Face.png", "photos"=>["Breakfast.png", "Coffee.png"]}, "button"=>""}

active_params will create or update the config/active_params.json file with the settings

{
  "POST users/create": {
    "user": [
      "avatar",
      "name",
      {
        "photos": [

        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

NOTE: see the test for a more complicated example

In non-development mode, active_params will NOT update the config/active_params.json file.

It loads config/active_params.json and automatically perform the correct strong parameters setup for each request

params[:user] = params.require(:user).permit(:avatar, :name, photos: [])

So, in your controllers, you can simply reference params[:user] again!

def create
  @user = User.new(params[:user])
  if @user.save
    redirect_to @user, notice: 'User was successfully created.'
  else
    render :new
  end
end

When you create new features for your app & try them out in development mode, config/active_params.json will be automatically updated. When you commit your code, include the changes to config/active_params.json too.

You can add a config/initializers/active_params.rb file in your Rails app, and perform a global config like this

ActiveParams.config do |config|
  config.writing = Rails.env.development?
  config.path    = "config/active_params.json"
  config.scope   = proc { |controller|
    "#{controller.request.method} #{controller.controller_name}/#{controller.action_name}"
  }
end

Each controller may need its own config, e.g. some strong params are only permitted for certain current_user roles. For such controllers, use the include ActiveParams.setup(...) syntax instead

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include ActiveParams.setup({
    path: "tmp/strong_params.json",
    writing: !Rails.env.production?,
    scope: proc {|ctrl|
      [ctrl.current_user.role, ActiveParams.scope.(ctrl)].join('@')
    },
  })
end

You can setup

• where the config file is stored
• if you want to write to the config file
• how should strong params be scoped

MIT