Rails Crash Course

Chapter 9. Authentication

Identity is a core concept in any social network, and authentication is the act of identifying yourself to a system. You want users to be able to sign up for new accounts and log into your application. Although gems like devise and authlogic provide complete authentication systems for Rails applications, in this chapter, you’ll get your hands dirty by building your own system instead.

In addition to the signup, login, and logout actions, you’ll also add methods for getting the current logged-in user’s identity and redirecting anonymous users to the login page. This authentication system will require controllers and views, so before starting, let’s take a moment to add a little style to your site with the Bootstrap ...