Integration with Ruby on Rails

This guide shows you how to integrate AuthRocket with your Rails app by using LoginRocket. It will use our streamlined Rails integration.

You need to have already created a Realm for your app. If that’s not done yet, do that now or see Your first realm.

Walkthough a complete Rails integration. 6 min.

Install the authrocket gem

Start by adding the gem to your Gemfile. The extra require: ... enables the streamlined Rails integration, so don’t skip that.

gem 'authrocket', '~> 3.0', require: 'authrocket/rails'

Then run bundle.

Get your LoginRocket credentials

In the AuthRocket management portal, go to Realm -> Integration -> Using LoginRocket, and then select Ruby on Rails.

Keep this page open—you’ll need the information here in the next step.

Configuring the gem

Using environment variables

If you use environment variables to configure your app (Heroku, Foreman, Kubernetes, etc), just set the following:

LOGINROCKET_URL=https://YOUR-URL.e2.loginrocket.com/

When using foreman for development, simply add the above to your .env.

Remember to restart your Rails server.

Using an initializer

Instead of environment variables, you may also use an initializer. Since your LoginRocket URL is public anyway, it’s perfectly safe to commit this to your git repos.

Create a new initializer at config/initializers/authrocket.rb with the following:

AuthRocket::Api.credentials = {
  loginrocket_url: 'https://YOUR-URL.e2.loginrocket.com/'
}

Remember to restart your Rails server.

Protecting your app

The next step is to add before_action to all controllers or actions that should require a login.

Protect the entire app

# app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :require_login
end

Protect an entire controller

# eg: app/controllers/profiles_controller.rb
class ProfilesController < ApplicationController
  before_action :require_login
end

Protect only certain actions

# eg: app/controllers/posts_controller.rb
class PostsController < ApplicationController
  before_action :require_login, only: [:create, :edit, :new, :update, :destroy]
    # use Rails' standard options :only and :except
end

As always, you can also use skip_before_action :require_login if needed.

Helpers

The authrocket gem includes a number of useful helpers too.

Links

It’s common to add links like Login, Signup, Logout, and Manage Profile.

<%= link_to 'Login', ar_login_url %>
<%= link_to 'Signup', ar_signup_url %>
<%= link_to 'Logout', logout_path %>
<%= link_to 'Manage Profile', ar_profile_url %>

It’s also possible to return the user to the previous page after managing their profile.

<%= link_to 'Manage Profile', ar_profile_url(redirect_uri: full_url_for) %>

If using LoginRocket’s multi-user account mode, these may also be helpful:

<%= link_to 'Manage Account', ar_account_url %>
<%= link_to 'Switch Accounts', ar_accounts_url %>

Current user and account

Access the current session and user:

current_session
# => AuthRocket::Session

current_user
# => AuthRocket::User
current_user.first_name
# => "Dave"

Access the current account (org) and permissions:

# the primary account record is the 'org':
current_org
# => AuthRocket::Org
current_org.id  # account id
current_org.name  # account name
# => "Widgets, Inc."

# permissions are part of the membership:
current_membership
# => AuthRocket::Membership
current_membership.permissions
# => ["forum:moderator"]
current_membership.any_permission?('forum:moderator')
# => true

In multi-user account mode, when the user switches accounts (use ar_accounts_url above), current_org and current_membership will automatically update to reflect the currently selected account.

AuthRocket’s helpers are also available in your controllers.

Example

Using the helpers in a view or layout is pretty familiar.

For example, you might add something like this to app/views/layouts/application.html.erb:

<nav>
  <% if current_user %>
    Hi, <%= current_user.name %>!
    | <%= link_to 'Profile', ar_profile_url %>
    | <%= link_to 'Logout', logout_path %>
  <% else %>
    <%= link_to 'Login', ar_login_url %>
    | <%= link_to 'Signup', ar_signup_url %>
  <% end %>
</nav>

Logins, Permissions, and Accounts

Logins only

Sometimes the above is all you need. If a login is only required for an admin area and you don’t need permissions, just having a valid login may be sufficient.

Logins + permissions

For many more apps, checking permissions is enough. For example:

# app/controllers/admin_controller.rb
class AdminController
  before_action :ensure_is_admin

  # ...

  def ensure_is_admin
    unless current_membership.any_permission?('site:admin')
      redirect_to '/'
    end
  end
end

Connecting to your app’s data

Other times an app has its own concept of an account. In this case, we need to connect that account to AuthRocket’s account/org.

In this example, we’ll assume that you have a local Account model (in app/models/account.rb) that’s persisted to your app’s database. We’ll also assume you want to define a current_account method that loads and exposes this Account.

First, add a column to store the AuthRocket Org ID. If you’re creating a migration, the column might look like this:

add_column :accounts, :ar_org_id, :string, limit: 30
add_index :accounts, :ar_org_id, unique: true

Then add current_account:

# add to: app/controllers/application_controller.rb
def current_account
  @current_account ||= begin
    if current_org
      acct = Account.where(ar_org_id: current_org.id).first
      acct ||= Account.create!(
        ar_org_id: current_org.id,
        name: current_org.name,
        owner_email: current_user.email
      )
    end
  end
end

# make this method availble to your views too
helper_method :current_account

From here, accessing related data is often very straight forward. For example, if Account has_many :articles, simply retrieve them in the relevant controller or view:

current_account.articles

What’s next

Logins should now be working with your app! Signups or invitations too, if they’ve been enabled (hint: Realm -> Settings -> LoginRocket).

If you want to enable social login, 2FA, email verification, or anything else, just do that inside AuthRocket. No extra code required!

If you’re stuck, let us know how we can help.