Rails - Dec 2006 - Encryption and Dynamic Finders

Hi All,

I just created an encrypter model to automatically encrypt all of the
content_columns in any model that uses it (I used the Encrypter example
from "Pragmatic Programming with Ruby on Rails" as a guide, and Sentry
for actual encryption).

The problem I''m facing now is actually searching the encrypted data.
Overriding the default "find" method is fairly straightforward, but
things get messy when trying to use dynamic attribute-based finders.

Has anyone else run across a similar problem and/or found an elegant
solution?

Thanks much,

-Mike.

P.S. for reference, here is the code for encrypter.rb.  Encrypter.key is
set in application.rb from user input.

class Encrypter
  require ''sentry''
  @@s=Sentry::SymmetricSentry
  def self.key=(k)
    @@key=k
  end
  def self.key
    @@key
  end

  def before_save(model)
    model.class.content_columns.each do |field|
      model[field.name]=@@s.encrypt(model[field.name].to_s,
self.class.key) if model[field.name].class==String
    end
  end
  def after_save(model)
    model.class.content_columns.each do |field|
      model[field.name]=@@s.decrypt(model[field.name].to_s,
self.class.key) if model[field.name].class==String
    end
  end
  alias_method :after_find, :after_save
end

class ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.encrypt()
    encrypter = Encrypter.new()
    before_save encrypter
    after_save encrypter
    after_find encrypter
    define_method(:after_find) { }
  end
end

-- 
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