"Regular mode" for admins and moderators (e.g. something like "sudo")

[mattdm (Matthew Miller)]

@leonardo

Just to add some color, the possiblity for an admin user to be acting as a regular user would add an extra dimension to absolutely all admin related authorization logic.

Even though that logic is mostly centralized in guardian.rb and /lib/guardian/*.rb , the complexity and bug potential for such a change would be very large, and the necessity of this feature would need need for far outweigh that, which it doesn’t, given the alternatives.

So… I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m less convinced that it’s a big change after all. Sure, there’s lots of scattered logic, but doesn’t it all come down to checking is_admin or is_staff?

The “sudo” would just need to add a “staff_mode” toggle, and is_staff and is_admin functions could check the state of that toggle AND the user.admin or user.staff flag. (Of course, activating the toggle would need a special check which just looked at the user.admin or user.staff value.)