Use restful_authentication if your application requires a restful interface.

This article is part of the confusing world of Authentication in Rails. But you can help, and hey, maybe there’s even some hope:

Yay! (read why)

You’ve (probably) come to the right place. acts_as_authenticated seems to be the only sane solution if you’re looking for an authentication system generator for rails. Rejoice and use it!

Oh and you really want to see the official Acts As Authenticated Stikipad

Onwards!

I’ve been working with this one for awhile, but the documentation is rather sparse. After bugging kevinclark in #rubyonrails all evening, I decided to put this together. ‘AAA’ is my new favorite login framework, it seems the lightest and gets out of the way. It’s just tricky to get started.

In rails/:

ruby script/plugin source HTTP://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins
ruby script/plugin install acts_as_authenticated
ruby script/generate authenticated user account

This step will also generate the required migration for the user table: In rails/app:

rake db:migrate

Read through controllers/account_controller , models/user.rb and lib/authenticated_system.rb

Put include AuthenticatedSystem in your application controller (make sure you put it in the class, not before it), and put before_filter :login_required in every controller you want protected. More details in account_controller.rb.

To get to user info inside a controller or view (like, say, their login name):

current_user.login

To create a user account, go to http://localhost:3000/account/signup (or whatever your server is accessible)

You can get additonal help at http://technoweenie.stikipad.com wiki.

Some remarks

This almost worked instantly for me! I’m impressed. However, I did have to change line 11 of authenticated_system.rb to include User.find(session[:user])) instead of User.find_by_id(session[:user])), because Ruby wouldn’t recognize that function. Dunno why, I thought I had seen it before…

Also, I think this package could be even better if it included an “edit account” template.

Careful, User.find and User.find_by_id are subtly different. find_by_id would return nil if it can’t find the user. find would raise an exception.