Ruby on Rails Tutorial, 6th Edition

Chapter 8

Basic Login

Now that new users can sign up for our site (Chapter 7), it’s time to give them the ability to log in and log out. In this chapter, we’ll implement a basic but still fully functional login system: The application will maintain the logged-in state until the browser is closed by the user. The resulting authentication system will allow us to customize the site and implement an authorization model based on login status and identity of the current user. For example, we’ll be able to update the site header with login/logout links and a profile link.

In Chapter 10, we’ll impose a security model in which only logged-in users can visit the user index page, only the correct user can access the page for editing their information, ...