Rack::Cerberus

Rack::Cerberus is a Rack middleware for form-based authentication. It works roughly like Basic HTTP authentication except that you can use options in order to style the authentication page.

Install with:

# gem install rack-cerberus

Or in your Gemfile:

gem 'rack-cerberus'

You can use it almost the same way you use Rack::Auth::Basic:

require 'rack/cerberus'
use Rack::Session::Cookie, secret: 'change_me'
use Rack::Cerberus do |login, pass|
  pass=='secret'
end

Like in that example, make sure you have a session, because Rack::Cerberus uses it for persistent login, and make sure it is encrypted.

Options

There is an optional hash you can add for customisation it. Options are:

:company_name
:bg_color (Background color)
:fg_color (Actually the color of the box color)
:text_color
:icon_url (For a company logo or any icon)
:css_location (Path to a CSS file for a complete reskin)
:session_key (Where login name is kept. Default is cerberus_user)

Which is used that way:

use Rack::Cerberus, {company_name: 'Nintendo'} do |login, pass|
  pass=='secret'
end

The purpose of Rack::Cerberus is to be basic, which is why there are enough options to have a page fairly customized with colors and logo (:icon_url). The logo can even replace the company name if you leave :company_name blank. But should you be fussy, this is possible to have more control using an external CSS file with the option :css_location.

Authentication

Just like Rack::Auth::Basic, Rack::Cerberus yields login and pass, and delegate authentication to the block you send it which should return true or false.

You can also use the 3rd argument which is the request object:

use Rack::Cerberus, {company_name: 'Nintendo'} do |login, pass, req|
  pass=='secret' && req.xhr?
end

This is useful if you want to check other details of the request. Like the referer or another parameter. But bear in mind that cerberus_login and cerberus_pass are still mandatory.

Example

If you want to see a concrete example, go into the example/ directory and run:

# rackup

It's gonna start the example at http://localhost:9292

Logout

Any request to /logout on the path where the middleware is mounted will log you out. In other words, if you put the middleware at /admin, query /admin/logout to be logged out. Pretty simple.

Help

If you want to help me, don't hesitate to fork that project on Github or send patches.

rack-cerberus

Development