CanCan: load_and_authorize_resource in namespace other than that of MainApp

Question

I'm using CanCan for permissions in my Rails application in which I have built my own engine for some generic form functionality. I would like to lock down permissions in my system so that users cannot freely access my engine controllers' actions. These controllers, for the most part, just make use of the 7 REST actions, so I would like to use CanCan's load_and_authorize_resource at the top of each controller.

However, when I write my code like this:

    module MyEngine
      class FormController < ApplicationController
        load_and_authorize_resource
        ...
      end
    end

I get this error:

    uninitialized constant Form

My guess is that the automatic loader in load_and_authorize_resource is tied to my MainApp namespace, and does not recognize that I am calling it in a different namespace, and so does a call like Form.find(params[:id]) rather than MyEngine::Form.find(params[:id]).

If this is the case, how can I fix this? It's not a huge deal because authorize! still works properly, so I can define the authorization in each action individually, but it would feel much cleaner if I were able to use the load_and_authorize_resource method.

Answer 1

CanCan can not find namespaced models. Try to specify class:

load_and_authorize_resource class: MyEngine::Form