Declarative Authorization

Declarative Authorization is not fully integrated into Rails Admin, so it is only possible to add permissions to the controller actions. Currently if you want more integrated authorization, consider CanCan.

You can hook declarative_authorization into Rails Admin using code like this in an initializer (e.g., config/initializers/rails_admin.rb):

require "rails_admin/application_controller"

module RailsAdmin
  class ApplicationController < ::ApplicationController
    filter_access_to :all
  end
end

By default, access to the controllers will be denied to all users, so you need to write some authz rules so that the appropriate users can get access. These rules will vary, but here's an example:

authorization do
  role :admin do
    has_permission_on :rails_admin_history, :to => [:list, :slider, :for_model, :for_object]
    has_permission_on :rails_admin_main, :to => [:index, :show, :new, :edit, :create, :update, :destroy, :list, :delete, :bulk_delete, :bulk_destroy, :get_pages, :show_history]
  end
end

This will allow the :admin role to do everything, and will prevent all other roles from doing anything.

Authorization Adapter

If you would like better support for Declarative Authorization in Rails Admin, consider making an authorization adapter for it. See the CanCan Adapter for an example. Fork the project, add the adapter, and send a pull request.