Rails authentication with email & password.

We have clearance, Clarence.

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Clearance is a Rails engine. It works with versions of Rails greater than 2.3.

Install it as a gem however you like to install gems. Also, uninstall old versions:

sudo gem uninstall thoughtbot-clearance
sudo gem uninstall clearance
sudo gem install clearance

Make sure the development database exists, then run the generator:

script/generate clearance

This:

• inserts Clearance::User into your User model
• inserts Clearance::Authentication into your ApplicationController
• inserts Clearance::Routes.draw(map) into your config.routes.rb
• created a migration that either creates a users table or adds only missing columns
• prints further instructions

If you want to authenticate users for a controller action, use the authenticate method in a before_filter.

class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :authenticate
  def index
    @widgets = Widget.all
  end
end

To change any of provided actions, subclass a Clearance controller...

class SessionsController < Clearance::SessionsController
  def new
    # my special new action
  end
  def url_after_create
    my_special_path
  end
end

and add your route above (before) Clearance routes in config/routes.rb:

map.resource :session, :controller => 'sessions'

See lib/clearance/routes.rb for all the routes Clearance provides.

Actions that redirect (create, update, and destroy) in Clearance controllers can be overriden by re-defining url_after_(action) methods as seen above.

As your app evolves, you want to know that authentication still works. Our opinion is that you should test its integration with your app using Cucumber.

Run the Cucumber generator and Clearance feature generator:

script/generate cucumber
script/generate clearance_features

All of the files generated should be new with the exception of the features/support/paths.rb file. If you have not modified your paths.rb then you will be okay to replace it with this one. If you need to keep your paths.rb file then add these locations in your paths.rb manually:

def path_to(page_name)
  case page_name
  when /the sign up page/i
   new_user_path
  when /the sign in page/i
   new_session_path
  when /the password reset request page/i
   new_password_path
  end
end

Edit config/environments/cucumber.rb to include these lines:

config.gem 'factory_girl'
config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => 'localhost:3000' }

Then run rake!

We use & recommend Formtastic.

Clearance has another generator to generate Formastic views:

script/generate clearance_views

Its implementation is designed so other view styles (Haml?) can be generated.

Clearance was extracted out of Hoptoad. We merged the authentication code from two of thoughtbot client Rails apps and have since used it each time we need authentication.

The following people have improved the library. Thank you!

Dan Croak, Mike Burns, Jason Morrison, Joe Ferris, Eugene Bolshakov, Nick Quaranto, Josh Nichols, Mike Breen, Marcel Görner, Bence Nagy, Ben Mabey, Eloy Duran, Tim Pope, Mihai Anca, Mark Cornick, Shay Arnett, Joshua Clayton, Mustafa Ekim, Jon Yurek, Anuj Dutta, Chad Pytel, Ben Orenstein, Bobby Wilson, Matthew Ford, Ryan McGeary, Claudio Poli, Joseph Holsten, Peter Haza, Ron Newman, and Rich Thornett.