Challah
Challah (pronounced HAH-lah) is a simple Rails authentication gem that provides users a way to authenticate with your app. Most of the functionality within the gem lives within a Rails engine and tries to stay out of the way of your app.
Challah doesn't provide any fancy controllers or views that clutter your app or force you to display information a certain way. That part is up to you. The functionality within Challah is designed to be a starting point for users and sign-ins you can tweak the rest to your app's needs.
Requirements
- Ruby 2.5.0+
- Rails 5.2+
Installation
In your Gemfile
gem "challah"
Set up
Once the gem has been set up and installed, run the following command to set up the database migrations:
rails challah:setup
This will copy over the necessary migrations to your app and migrate the database. You will be prompted to add the first user as the last step in this process.
Manual set up
If you would prefer to handle these steps manually, you can do so by using these rake tasks instead:
rails generate challah
rails challah:unpack:user
rails db:migrate
Creating users
Since Challah doesn't provide any controller and views for users there are a few handy rake tasks you can use to create new records.
Use the following task to create a new user:
# Creates a new User record
rails challah:users:create
User Model
Challah provides the core User
model for your app, and a database migration to go along with it. You can do anything you want with the model, just leave the Challah::Userable
concern intact to keep Challah's standard user methods included.
A user is anyone that needs to be able to authenticate (sign in) to the application. Each user requires a first name, last name, email address, username, and password.
By default a user is marked as "active" and is able to log in to your application. If the active status column is toggled to inactive
, then this user is no longer able to log in. The active status column can be used as a soft-delete function for users.
Checking for a current user
The basic way to restrict functionality within your app is to require that someone authenticate (log in) before they can see it. From within your controllers and views you can call the current_user?
method to determine if someone has authenticated. This method doesn't care about who the user is, or what it has access to, just that it has successfully authenticated and is a valid user.
For example, restrict the second list item to only users that have logged in:
<ul>
<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
<% if current_user? %>
<li><a href="/secret-stuff">Secret Stuff</a></li>
<% end %>
<li><a href="/public-stuff">Not-so-secret Stuff</a></li>
</ul>
Controllers can also be restricted using before_action
:
class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
before_action :signin_required
# ...
end
Or, you can call restrict_to_authenticated
instead, which does the same thing:
class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
restrict_to_authenticated
# ...
end
All normal Rails before_action
options apply, so you can always limit this restriction to a specific action:
class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
restrict_to_authenticated only: [ :edit, :update, :destroy ]
# ...
end
Default Routes
By default, there are a few routes included with the Challah engine. These routes provide a basic method for a username and password sign in page. These routes are:
GET /sign-in # => SessionsController#new
POST /sign-in # => SessionsController#create
GET /sign-out # => SessionsController#new
Feel free to override the SessionsController
with something more appropriate for your app.
If you'd prefer to set up your own "sign in" and "sign out" actions, you can skip the inclusion of the default routes by adding the following line to an initializer file in your app:
# in config/initializers/challah.rb
Challah.options[:skip_routes] = true
Sign In Form
By default, the sign in form is tucked away within the Challah gem. If you'd like to customize the markup or functionality of the sign in form, you can unpack it into your app by running:
# Copy the sign in view into your app
rails challah:unpack:views
If necessary, the sessions controller which handles creating new sessions and signing users out can also be unpacked into your app. This is really only recommended if you need to add some custom behavior or have advanced needs.
# Copy the sessions controller into your app
rails challah:unpack:signin
API Controllers
For apps that use JSON API controllers, Challah can be used to authenticate a user with a url parameter or an HTTP request header. This feature is disabled by default, so to use it you will need to change the token_enabled
setting to true
:
# in config/initializers/challah.rb
Challah.options[:token_enabled] = true
Once enabled, this setting will allow the api_key
for the user to be used to authenticate them via the token
parameter, or X-Auth-Token
HTTP header.
For example, the following request would authenticate a valid active user that has the api_key
value of abc123
:
curl -H "X-Auth-Token: abc123" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
http://localhost:3000/api/test.json
Using the token
param, you could write the same thing as:
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
http://localhost:3000/api/test.json?token=abc123
If you'd like to change the HTTP header used to fetch the user's api key from, you can change it using the token_header
setting:
# in config/initializers/challah.rb
Challah.options[:token_enabled] = true
Challah.options[:token_header] = "X-App-User"
Then:
curl -H "X-App-User: abc123" \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
http://localhost:3000/api/test.json
Note: Custom HTTP headers should always start with X-
ActionCable
Challah works well with securing your ActionCable channels since Rails 5. Here is a sample ApplicationCable::Connection
file to secure connections to a valid signed-in user:
module ApplicationCable
class Connection < ActionCable::Connection::Base
identified_by :current_user
def connect
self.current_user = find_current_user
end
private
def find_current_user
if user = Challah::Session.find(request)
user
else
reject_unauthorized_connection
end
end
end
end
User Validations
By default, the first_name
, last_name
, and email
fields are required on the user model. If you'd prefer to add your own validations and leave the defaults off, you can use the following option within an initializer:
# in config/initializers/challah.rb
Challah.options[:skip_user_validations] = true
Authorization Model
The Authorization
model can be used to store user credentials for a variety of different sources. By default, usernames and passwords are hashed and stored in this table.
In addition to the username/password, you can also use the authorizations table to store credentials or tokens for other services as well. For example, you could store a successful Facebook session using the following method:
Authorization.set({
# provider is just a key and can be anything to denote this service
provider: :facebook,
# the user's Facebook UID
uid: "000000",
# the user's Facebook-provided access token
token: "abc123",
# the user ID to link to this authorization
user_id: user.id,
# (optional, when this token expires)
expires_at: 60.minutes.from_now
})
Then, to remove an authorization, just provide the user'd ID and the provider:
Authorization.del({
provider: :facebook,
user_id: user.id
})
Full documentation
Documentation is available at: http://rubydoc.info/gems/challah
Issues
If you have any issues or find bugs running Challah, please report them on Github. While most functions should be stable, Challah is still in its infancy and certain issues may be present.
Testing
Challah is fully tested using RSpec. To run the test suite, bundle install
then run:
rspec
License
Challah is released under the MIT license
Contributions and pull-requests are more than welcome.