ActionAuth

ActionAuth is an authentication Rails engine crafted to integrate seamlessly with your Rails application. Optimized for Rails 7.1.0, it employs the most modern authentication techniques and streamlined token reset processes. Its simplicity and ease of use let you concentrate on developing your application, while its reliance on ActiveSupport::CurrentAttributes ensures a user experience akin to that offered by the well-regarded Devise gem.

1. Introduction
2. Installation
3. Features
4. Usage
   • Routes
   • Helper Methods
   • Restricting and Changing Routes
5. Have I Been Pwned
6. Magic Links
7. SMS Authentication
8. Account Deletion
9. WebAuthn
10. Within Your Application
11. Customizing

• Sign In Page

12. License
13. Credits

With the release of v1.0.0, there are some breaking changes that have been introduced. The biggest change is that the ActionAuth::User model now uses the table name of users instead of action_auth_users. This was done to make it easier to integrate with your application without having to worry about the table name. If you have an existing application that is using ActionAuth, you will need to rename the table to users with a migration like

rename_table :action_auth_users, :users

Coming from v0.3.0 to v1.0.0, you will need to create a migration to rename the table and foreign keys.

class UpgradeActionAuth < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.1]
  def change
    rename_table :action_auth_users, :users

    rename_table :action_auth_sessions, :sessions
    rename_column :sessions, :action_auth_user_id, :user_id

    rename_table :action_auth_webauthn_credentials, :webauthn_credentials
    rename_column :webauthn_credentials, :action_auth_user_id, :user_id
  end
end

You will then need to undo the migrations where the foreign keys were added in cases where foreign_key: true was changed to foreign_key: { to_table: 'action_auth_users' }. You can do this for each table with a migration like:

add_foreign_key :user_settings, :users, column: :user_id unless foreign_key_exists?(:user_settings, :users)
add_foreign_key :profiles, :users, column: :user_id unless foreign_key_exists?(:profiles, :users)
add_foreign_key :nfcs, :users, column: :user_id unless foreign_key_exists?(:nfcs, :users)

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

bundle add action_auth

Then run the rake task to copy over the migrations, config and routes.

bin/rails action_auth:install

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

bundle add action_auth
bin/rails action_auth:install:migrations

Modify config/routes.rb to include the following (note that the path can be anything you want):

mount ActionAuth::Engine => 'action_auth'

In your view layout

<% if user_signed_in? %>
  <li><%= link_to "Security", user_sessions_path %></li>
  <li><%= button_to "Sign Out", user_session_path(current_session), method: :delete %></li>
<% else %>
  <li><%= link_to "Sign In", new_user_session_path %></li>
  <li><%= link_to "Sign Up", new_user_registration_path %></li>
<% end %>

If you're using something like importmaps and plain css, then you may need to add the lines below to your app/assets/config/manifest.js file.

//= link action_auth/application.css
//= link action_auth/application.js

See WebAuthn for additional configuration steps if you want to enable WebAuthn. In your config/initializers/action_auth.rb file, you can add the following configuration settings.

ActionAuth.configure do |config|
  config.allow_user_deletion = true
  config.default_from_email = "from@example.com"
  config.magic_link_enabled = true
  config.passkey_only = true # Allows sign in with only a passkey
  config.pwned_enabled = true # defined?(Pwned)
  config.sms_auth_enabled = false
  config.verify_email_on_sign_in = true
  config.webauthn_enabled = true # defined?(WebAuthn)
  config.webauthn_origin = "http://localhost:3000" # or "https://example.com"
  config.webauthn_rp_name = Rails.application.class.to_s.deconstantize

  config.insert_cookie_domain = false
end

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  ActionAuth.configure do |config|
    config.sms_send_class = SmsSender
  end
end

These are the planned features for ActionAuth. The ones that are checked off are currently implemented. The ones that are not checked off are planned for future releases.

✅ - Sign Up, Sign In, Sign Out

✅ - Password reset

✅ - Account Email Verification

✅ - Cookie-based sessions

✅ - Device Session Management

✅ - Multifactor Authentication (through Passkeys)

✅ - Passkeys/Hardware Security Keys

✅ - Passkeys sign in without email/password

✅ - Magic Links

⏳ - OAuth with Google, Facebook, Github, Twitter, etc.

✅ - SMS Authentication

✅ - Have I Been Pwned Integration

✅ - Account Deletion

⏳ - Account Lockout

⏳ - Account Suspension

⏳ - Account Impersonation

Within your application, you'll have access to these routes. They have been styled to be consistent with Devise.

Method				Verb		Params	Description
user_sessions_path		GET			Device session management
user_session_path		DELETE		[:id]	Log Out
new_user_session_path		GET			Log in
new_user_registration_path	GET			Sign Up
edit_password_path		GET			Change Password
password_path			PATCH			Update Password

Method			Description
current_user		Returns the currently logged in user
user_signed_in?		Returns true if the user is logged in
current_session		Returns the current session

Sometimes, there could be some routes that you would want to prevent access to unless the user is an admin. These routes could be for managing users, or other sensitive data. You can create a constraint to restrict access to these routes.

# app/constraints/admin_constraint.rb

class AdminConstraint
  def self.matches?(request)
    user = current_user(request)
    user && user.admin?
  end

  def self.current_user(request)
     session_token = request.cookie_jar.signed[:session_token]
     session = ActionAuth::Session.find_by(id: session_token)
     return nil unless session.present?
     session.action_auth_user&.becomes(User)
  end
end

# config/routes.rb

constraints AdminConstraint do
  mount GoodJob::Engine => 'good_job'
end

Other times, you may want to have a different kind of view for a user that is logged in versus a user that is not logged in.

# app/constraints/authenticated_constraint.rb
class AuthenticatedConstraint
  def self.matches?(request)
    session_token = request.cookie_jar.signed[:session_token]
    ActionAuth::Session.exists?(session_token)
  end
end

# config/routes.rb
constraints AuthenticatedConstraint do
  root to: 'dashboard#index'
end
root to: 'welcome#index'

Have I Been Pwned is a way that youre able to check if a password has been compromised in a data breach. This is a great way to ensure that your users are using secure passwords.

Add the pwned gem to your Gemfile. That's all you'll have to do to enable this functionality.

bundle add pwned

Magic Links are a way to authenticate a user without requiring a password. This is done by sending an email to the user with a link that will log them in. This is a great way to allow users to log in without having to remember a password. This is especially useful for users who may not have a password manager or have a hard time remembering passwords.

SMS Authentication is disabled by default. The purpose of this is to allow users to authenticate with a phone number. This is useful and specific to applications that may require a phone number instead of an email address for authentication. The basic workflow for this is to register a phone number, and then send a code to the phone number. The user will then enter the code to authenticate.

No password or email is required for this. I do not recommend enabling this feature for most applications.

You must set up your own SMS Provider. This is not included in the gem. You will need to configure the sms_send_class to send the SMS code. This will expect a class method called send_code that will take in the parameters phone_number and code.

require 'twilio-ruby'

class SmsSender
  def self.send_code(phone_number, code)
    account_sid = ENV['TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID']
    auth_token = ENV['TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN']
    from_number = ENV['TWILIO_PHONE_NUMBER']

    client = Twilio::REST::Client.new(account_sid, auth_token)

    client.messages.create(
      from: from_number,
      to: phone_number,
      body: "Your verification code is #{code}"
    )
  end
end

Since this file could live in the app/models or elsewhere, we will need to set its configuration after the Rails application has been loaded. This can be done in an initializer.

Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  ActionAuth.configure do |config|
    config.sms_send_class = SmsSender
  end
end

Account deletion is a feature that is enabled by default. When a user deletes their account, the account is marked as deleted and the user is logged out. The user will no longer be able to log in with their email and password. The user will need to create a new account if they wish to continue using the application.

Here's an example of how you may want to add a delete account button to your application. Obviously, you will want to style this to fit your application and have some kind of confirmation dialog.

<p>
  Unhappy with the service?
  <%= button_to "Delete Account", action_auth.users_path, method: :delete %>
</p>

ActionAuth's approach for WebAuthn is simplicity. It is used as a multifactor authentication step, so users will still need to register their email address and password. Once the user is registered, they can add a Passkey to their account. The Passkey could be an iCloud Keychain, a hardware security key like a Yubikey, or a mobile device. If enabled and configured, the user will be prompted to use their Passkey after they log in.

The migrations are already copied over to your application when you run bin/rails action_auth:install:migrations. There are only two steps that you have to take to enable WebAuthn for your application.

The reason why you need to add the gem is because it's not added to the gemspec of ActionAuth. This is intentional as not all users will want to add this functionality. This will help minimize the number of gems that your application relies on unless if they are features that you want to use.

bundle add webauthn

Note: that the origin name does not have a trailing / or a port number.

ActionAuth.configure do |config|
  config.webauthn_enabled = true
  config.webauthn_origin = "http://localhost:3000" # or "https://example.com"
  config.webauthn_rp_name = Rails.application.class.to_s.deconstantize
  config.verify_email_on_sign_in = true
  config.default_from_email = "from@example.com"
end

Here's a view of the experience with WebAuthn

It can be cumbersome to have to reference ActionAuth::User within the application as well as in the relationships between models. Luckily, we can use ActiveSupport::CurrentAttributes to make this process easier as well as inheritance of our models.

# app/models/user.rb
class User < ActionAuth::User
  has_many :posts, dependent: :destroy
end

We can set the user to become a User record instead of an ActionAuth::User record. This will then allow Current.user.posts to work.

# app/models/current.rb
class Current < ActiveSupport::CurrentAttributes
  def user
    return unless ActionAuth::Current.user
    ActionAuth::Current.user&.becomes(User)
  end
end

We are using user:belongs_to instead of action_auth_user:belongs_to.

bin/rails g scaffold posts user:belongs_to title

And the post model doesn't need anything special to ActionAuth.

# app/models/post.rb
class Post < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :user
end

Now, you'll be able to do things like Current.user and Current.user.posts within your application. However, I recommend that you still use the helpers around user_signed_in? to verify that the ActionAuth::Current.user is not nil (or nil if they are signed out). This will help ensure that any thread safety issues are avoided.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

❤️ Heavily inspired by Drifting Ruby #300 and Authentication Zero and cedarcode.