Simple Captcha Reloaded

This is a rewrite of the popular Simple-Captcha Gem(s). Similarly to Simple-Captcha, it provides an easy way to integrate a Captcha into a Rails application. In comparison to the older Gem(s), I decided to drop support for ancient versions of Rails + Formtastic + Mongoid, but instead add specs, code restructuring and support for SimpleForm, with the goal, to make it even easier to use.

• Works with Rails 4.1, 4.2, Ruby 2.0+ (keyword arguments)
• Integrated into Model validation flow
• controller integration for custom flow
• Optional SimpleForm integration (v.3.0 and 3.1)
• Optional Formtastic integration (v.2.3 and 3.1)
• Uses a database table to track random captchas (pg, myqsl, sqlite tested)
• Uses Imagemagick to generate the Captcha and stream it to the client, without file access

This needs Rails (4.1+), ActiveRecord with a database (all should be fine) and Imagemagick installed on the server.

Mac:

brew install imagemagick ghostscript

Linux:

apt-get install imagemagick ghostscript

Put it into your Gemfile:

gem 'simple_captcha_reloaded'

and run bundle install.

Install the migration to create the captcha data table:

rake simple_captcha_reloaded:install:migrations
rake db:migrate

Just integrate the module into on of your ActiveModel::Model compliant Models:

class Message < ActiveRecord::Base
  include SimpleCaptchaReloaded::Model
end

this adds 2 new methods: valid_with_captcha? and save_with_captcha to the model, as well as 2 virtual attributes captcha and captcha_key. Use it like this in controller:

class MessagesController < ApplicationController
  def submit
    @message = Message.new(message_params)
    if @message.save_with_captcha
      ...
    else
      render :new
    end
  end

  def message_params
    params.require(:message).permit(..., :captcha, :captcha_key)
  end
end

Make sure to whitelist the attributes captcha and captcha_key with Strong Parameters.

To show the captcha, you can use the SimpleForm or Formtastic helper or roll a total custom field:

The Gem provides a custom input for SimpleForm:

= simple_form_for @model do |f|
  = f.input :captcha, as: :simple_captcha
  = f.submit

To use it, just require it manually anywhere in your code (config/application.rb or a initializer file):

require 'simple_captcha_reloaded/adapters/simple_form'

The Formtastic adapter works exactly like the simple form one.

You can't include both at the same time, as both have the same naming schema and will load each other's adapter

require 'simple_captcha_reloaded/adapters/formtastic'

Similar to "Displaying Captcha" below, just change the key and value calls of the simple_captcha helper method to match your model:

= simple_captcha(key: 'user[captcha_key]', value: 'user[captcha]', refresh_button: true)

If you need to use the captcha without a model, you can do the show and validation by hand

Within your form, call the function:

= form_tag '' do |f|
  = simple_captcha(key: :captcha_key, value: :captcha, refresh_button: true)
  = submit_tag 'send'

This method is a thin wrapper which will render the view simple_captcha_reloaded/simple_captcha_reloaded.html in the end. As this is a Rails engine, you can overwrite the view by creating a app/views/simple_captcha_reloaded/_simple_captcha_reloaded.html.erb in your project tree.

Adjust it to your needs:

<div class='simple-captcha-wrapper' id='<%=id %>'>
  <%= hidden_field_tag key, captcha[:captcha_id] %>
  <%= image_tag captcha[:captcha_url], class: 'simple-captcha-image' %>
  <%= text_field_tag value, '', class: 'simple-captcha-input' %>
  <%- if refresh_button %>
    <%=link_to t('simple_captcha_reloaded.refresh_button_html'), captcha[:refresh_url], data: { remote: true} %>
  <% end %>
</div>

Now you can call a method in your controller to check if the Captcha is valid:

def submit
  if captcha_valid?(params[:captcha_key], params[:captcha])
    ..
  else
    ... error
  end
end

Translations: Just have a look at config/locales/simple_captcha.en.yml with defaults for German and English. Just overwrite the keys in your own translation file.

# Default Options
SimpleCaptchaReloaded::Config.tap do |config|
  config.captcha_path = '/simple_captcha'
  config.image = SimpleCaptchaReloaded::Image.new
  config.characters = %w[a b c d e f g h j k m n p q r s t u v w x y z 0 2 3 4 5 6 8 9]
  config.length = 6
end

To change the appearance of the Captcha, initialize a SimpleCaptchaReloaded::Image.new with different parameters (default parameters shown):

  config.image = SimpleCaptchaReloaded::Image.new(implode: :medium,
    distortion: :random,
    image_styles: IMAGE_STYLES.slice('simply_red', 'simply_green', 'simply_blue'),
    noise: 0,
    size: '100x28',
    image_magick_path: '',
    tmp_path: nil
  )

# whereas IMAGE_STYLES are:
IMAGE_STYLES = {
  'embosed_silver'  => ['-fill darkblue', '-shade 20x60', '-background white'],
  'simply_red'      => ['-fill darkred', '-background white'],
  'simply_green'    => ['-fill darkgreen', '-background white'],
  'simply_blue'     => ['-fill darkblue', '-background white'],
  'distorted_black' => ['-fill darkblue', '-edge 10', '-background white'],
  'all_black'       => ['-fill darkblue', '-edge 2', '-background white'],
  'charcoal_grey'   => ['-fill darkblue', '-charcoal 5', '-background white'],
  'almost_invisible' => ['-fill red', '-solarize 50', '-background white']
}

Report bugs/feature requests to the Github issues. If you'd like to contribute, here a little setup guide. The Gem uses Appraisal, to create various configuration Gem sets. For each Gem set, a new dummy app will be automatically created.

1. Fork, and clone
2. bundle
3. appraisal install
4. appraisal rails-stable make regenerate To build the dummy app with the Rails-Stable configuration
5. appraisal rails-stable rspec To run tests

If you need to add new controller methods to the dummy app, have a look at spec/template.rb

This rewrite was heavy inspired by the previous SimpleCaptcha Gems (licensed under MIT) by various authors:

• Sur Max
• Igor Galeta
• Azdaroth