Ruby On Rails: devise basics

Installation

In your gem file:

gem “devise”

$ bundle install
$ rails g devise:install

After that, your config files will be at:

config/initializers/devise.rb

Time to configure the user’s model:

$ rails g devise user
$ rake db:migrate

Note that at this point, you have a set of automatic views that are internal to devise. It is advisable that you run the following command, so you can customize those yourself in your views:

rails generate devise:views

Set pages so only login users can see them

In your controller, add the following line:

before_filter :authenticate_user!, :only => [:index, :new, :destroy]

Helpers

current_user contains information about the current user. for example current_user.email

user_signed_in? boolean to test if a user is signed in or not, use it as:

<% if user_signed_in? %>
  <%= link_to 'Sign Out', destroy_user_session_path, method: :delete %>
<% end %>

user_session is the session attached to the user, you can store stuff in it like:
user_session[:somevarname] = “somevarvalue”

Options
In the user’s model, confirmable takes care of sending a confirmation email to newly created accounts

:confirmable

You also need to add a migration along with the confirmable option:

class AddConfirmableToUsers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    add_column :users, :unconfirmed_email, :string
    add_column :users, :confirmation_token, :string
    add_column :users, :confirmed_at, :string
    add_column :users, :confirmation_sent_at, :datetime

    add_index :users, :confirmation_token, :unique => true

    User.update_all(:confirmed_at => Time.now) #your current data will be treated as if they have confirmed their account
  end

  def down
    remove_column :users, :unconfirmed_email, :confirmation_token, :confirmed_at, :confirmation_sent_at
  end
end