What is current_ability in cancan's accessible_by (fetching records)?

Question

In the documentation of cancan it shows how to fetch all accessible records (in http://wiki.github.com/ryanb/cancan/fetching-records) in this way:

@articles = Article.accessible_by(current_ability)

but what is current_ability? I've tried passing the current user which I'm using for authentication and authorization, but I've got this error:

NoMethodError: undefined method `conditions' for #<User:0x1092a3b90>

Any ideas what should I pass to accessible_by or what's wrong here?

Answer 1

CanCan extends ActionController::Base with the current_ability method (among others), which is the class that your ApplicationController should inherit from. So the example code in your question should work as is.