Clearance

Rails authentication & authorization with email & password.

Clearance was extracted out of Hoptoad.

Help

Documentation at RDoc.info.
Patches and bugs at Github Issues.
Mailing list at Google Groups.

Installation

Clearance is a Rails engine for Rails 3. It is currently tested against Rails 3.0.9 and Rails 3.1.0.rc4.

Include the gem in your Gemfile:

gem "clearance"

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

rails generate clearance:install

This:

inserts Clearance::User into your User model
inserts Clearance::Authentication into your ApplicationController
creates a migration that either creates a users table or adds only missing columns

Follow the instructions that are output from the generator.

Use the 0.8.x series of Clearance if you have a Rails 2 app.

Usage

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

class WidgetsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :authorize

  def index
    @widgets = Widget.all
  end
end

If you want to reference the current user in a controller, view, or helper, use the current_user method.

def index
  current_user.articles
end

If you want to know whether the current user is signed in or out, you can use these methods in controllers, views, or helpers:

signed_in?
signed_out?

Typically, you want to have something like this in your app, maybe in a layout:

<% if signed_in? %>
  <%= current_user.email %>
  <%= link_to "Sign out", sign_out_path, :method => :delete %>
<% else %>
  <%= link_to "Sign in", sign_in_path %>
<% end %>

If you ever want to authenticate the user some place other than sessions/new, maybe in an API:

User.authenticate("email@example.com", "password")

Overriding defaults

Clearance is intended to be small, simple, well-tested, and easy to override defaults.

If you ever need to change the logic in any of the four provided controllers, subclass the Clearance controller. You don't need to do this by default.

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

  def url_after_create
    my_special_path
  end
end

and add your route in config/routes.rb:

resource :session, :controller => 'sessions'

See config/routes.rb for all the routes Clearance provides.

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

Clearance is an engine, so it provides views for you. If you want to customize those views, there is a handy shortcut to copy the views into your app:

rails generate clearance:views

Optional Cucumber features

As your app evolves, you want to know that authentication still works. If you've installed Cucumber into your app:

rails generate cucumber:install

Then, you can use the Clearance features generator:

rails generate clearance:features

Edit your Gemfile to include:

gem 'factory_girl_rails'

Edit config/enviroments/test.rb to include the following:

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

Then run your tests!

rake

Optional test matchers

Clearance comes with test matchers that are compatible with RSpec and Test::Unit.

To use them, require the test matchers. For example, in spec/support/clearance.rb:

require 'clearance/testing'

You'll then have access to methods like:

sign_in
sign_in_as(user)
sign_out

And matchers like:

deny_access

Example:

context "a visitor" do
  before { get :show }
  it     { should deny_access }
end

context "a user" do
  before do
    sign_in
    get :show
  end

  it { should respond_with(:success) }
end

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details.

Credits

Clearance is maintained and funded by thoughtbot, inc

Thank you to all the contributors!

The names and logos for thoughtbot are trademarks of thoughtbot, inc.

TMaYaD/clearance