Devise Json Authentication - ajax

Question

I am writing backend of an app in Rails. As I work on the backend, I need to give the frontend developer a REST API to start building the frontend. Eventually, the frontend and backend will reside together in a single app, but for now they are separate.
For time being I have enabled Cross-origin resource sharing in my app, by adding following to ApplicationController:
config.action_dispatch.default_headers.merge!({
'Access-Control-Allow-Origin' => '*',
'Access-Control-Request-Method' => '*'
});
For now, I have also turned off CSRF tokens by adding following to application.rb:
skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token
I am using Devise for authenticating users. To make Devise work with JSON requests, I have done following:
In devise.rb
config.navigational_formats = ['*/*', :html, :json]
In routes.rb
devise_for :users, :controllers => {:omniauth_callbacks => "omniauth_callbacks", :sessions => 'sessions', :registrations => 'registrations' }
My SessionsController
class SessionsController < Devise::SessionsController
#todo had to do following to support logging in through ajax. need to add logic to send back error response when login fails.
#todo see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5973327/using-devise-1-3-to-authenticate-json-login-requests/8402035#8402035 and
#todo https://web.archive.org/web/20130928040249/http://jessehowarth.com/devise
#todo see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11277300/devise-failure-authentication-via-json-sends-back-html-instead-of-json
def create
respond_to do |format|
format.html { super }
format.json {
resource = warden.authenticate!(:scope => resource_name, :recall => "#{controller_path}#failure")
sign_in(resource_name, resource)
return render :json => {:success => true, :user => resource}
}
end
end
def destroy
respond_to do |format|
format.html { super }
format.json {
Devise.sign_out_all_scopes ? sign_out : sign_out(resource_name)
render :json => {}
}
end
end
def failure
render :json => {:success => false, :errors => ["Login Failed"]}, :status => 422
end
end
I have a extended Devise's RegistrationsController as well as indicated in routes.rb, but am not posting its content here, as I don't think it is relevant to this question.
With the above setup I am able to send an ajax request to '/users/sign_in' with user[email] and user[password] parameters and have the user signed in. The response looks something like this:
{
success: true
user: {
authentication_token: "SNa2kPqkm5ENsZMx7yEi"
created_at: "2014-12-16T02:40:39.179Z"
email: "xyz#xyz.com"
id: 99999
name: null
provider: null
uid: null
updated_at: "2014-12-17T02:29:31.537Z"
}
}
Now how do I use the authentication_token I received in the sign_in response to send requests to other controller actions that require user to be authenticated? Do I need to set this token in a request header? I am not able to find information on how to use this token. Please help.

Answer 1

It seems following as described in the gist here, the answer is that you send the suer's email and authetication_token with every request to the backend. You may choose to send it in request header or simply as parameters. You simply modify the method that checks the email and token and signs in the user in ApplicationController accordingly. This is my ApplicationController (I am now sending the email and token as parameters in the request):
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
# Prevent CSRF attacks by raising an exception.
# For APIs, you may want to use :null_session instead.
protect_from_forgery with: :exception
#todo remove this once ui is integrated. following turns off the csrf token:
skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token
#todo begin code to support authentication using token
# This is our new function that comes before Devise's one
before_filter :authenticate_user_from_token!
# This is Devise's authentication
before_filter :authenticate_user!
private
def authenticate_user_from_token!
user_email = params[:user_email].presence
user = user_email && User.find_by_email(user_email)
# Notice how we use Devise.secure_compare to compare the token
# in the database with the token given in the params, mitigating
# timing attacks.
if user && Devise.secure_compare(user.authentication_token, params[:user_token])
sign_in user, store: false
end
end
#todo end code to support authentication using token
end
I forgot to mention in my post that I had already added the migration to add a authentication_token column to User model. Also, I had to add following in the User model (as described in the gist), so that an authentication token is generated each time a user is created/updated:
#todo begin code to support ajax authentication of users
#todo see https://gist.github.com/josevalim/fb706b1e933ef01e4fb6
# You likely have this before callback set up for the token.
before_save :ensure_authentication_token
def ensure_authentication_token
if authentication_token.blank?
self.authentication_token = generate_authentication_token
end
end
private
def generate_authentication_token
loop do
token = Devise.friendly_token
break token unless User.where(authentication_token: token).first
end
end
#todo end code to support ajax authentication of users