Ruby On Rails: Login

By Andres Aguiar

Auth0

This tutorial demonstrates how to add user login to a Ruby on Rails application. We recommend you to Log in to follow this quickstart with examples configured for your account.

I want to integrate with my app

15 minutes

Configure Auth0
Configure Rails to Use Auth0
Trigger Authentication

I want to explore a sample app

2 minutes

Get a sample configured with your account settings or check it on Github.

View on Github

System requirements: Ruby 2.3.1+ | Rails 5.0.0+ or Rails 4.2.0+

New to Auth? Learn How Auth0 works, how it integrates with Regular Web Applications and which protocol it uses.

When you signed up for Auth0, a new application was created for you, or you could have created a new one.

You will need some details about that application to communicate with Auth0. You can get these details from the Application Settings section in the Auth0 dashboard.

You need the following information:

Client ID
Domain

If you download the sample from the top of this page these details are filled out for you.

If you have more than one application in your account, the sample comes with the values for your Default App.

App Dashboard

A callback URL is a URL in your application where Auth0 redirects the user after they have authenticated.

You need to whitelist the callback URL for your app in the Allowed Callback URLs field in your Application Settings. If you do not set any callback URL, your users will see a mismatch error when they log in.

If you are following along with the sample project you downloaded from the top of this page, you should set the Callback URL to http://localhost:3000/auth/oauth2/callback.

To follow along with this guide, add the following dependencies to your Gemfile and run bundle install.

gem 'omniauth', '~> 1.6.1'
gem 'omniauth-auth0', '~> 2.0.0'

If you are using Windows, uncomment the tzinfo-data gem in the Gemfile.

Create a file named auth0.rb under config/initializers and configure the OmniAuth middleware in it.

Rails.application.config.middleware.use OmniAuth::Builder do
  provider(
    :auth0,
    'YOUR_CLIENT_ID',
    'YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET',
    'YOUR_DOMAIN',
    callback_path: '/auth/oauth2/callback',
    authorize_params: {
      scope: 'openid profile'
    }
  )
end

This tutorial uses omniauth-auth0, a custom OmniAuth strategy.

Use the following command to create the controller that will handle the Auth0 callback:

rails generate controller auth0 --skip-template-engine --skip-assets --no-helper

In the newly created controller, add success and failure callback handlers.

# app/controllers/auth0_controller.rb

class Auth0Controller < ApplicationController
  def callback
    # This stores all the user information that came from Auth0
    # and the IdP
    session[:userinfo] = request.env['omniauth.auth']

    # Redirect to the URL you want after successful auth
    redirect_to '/dashboard'
  end

  def failure
    # show a failure page or redirect to an error page
    @error_msg = request.params['message']
  end
end

Replace the generated routes with the following:

# config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'auth/oauth2/callback' => 'auth0#callback'
  get 'auth/failure' => 'auth0#failure'
end

We need a way for users to trigger authentication. Add a link to /auth/auth0 anywhere in an existing template or use the steps below to generate a homepage in a new app.

Run the following command to generate the homepage controller and views:

rails generate controller home show --skip-assets

Add the following to the generated show.html.erb file:

<!-- app/views/home/show.html.erb -->

<img src="https://cdn.auth0.com/styleguide/1.0.0/img/badge.svg">
<h1>RoR Auth0 Sample</h1>
<p>Step 1 - Login.</p>
<a href="/auth/auth0">Login</a>

Finally, point the root path to generated controller:

# config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  root 'home#show'
  # ...
end

Run bin/rails server and go to localhost:3000 in your browser. You should see the Auth0 logo and a link to log in.

You can use a controller concern to control access to routes that require the user to be authenticated:

# app/controllers/concerns/secured.rb

module Secured
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    before_action :logged_in_using_omniauth?
  end

  def logged_in_using_omniauth?
    redirect_to '/' unless session[:userinfo].present?
  end
end

Now generate a controller for the dashboard view that users will see once they are authenticated:

rails generate controller dashboard show --skip-assets

Include the concern in the this new controller to prevent unauthenticated users from accessing its routes:

# app/controllers/dashboard_controller.rb

class DashboardController < ApplicationController
  include Secured

  def show
  end
end

Add the session data for userinfo to the dashboard view to see what is returned:

<!-- app/views/dashboard/show.html.erb -->

<h1>Dashboard#show</h1>
<%= session[:userinfo].inspect %>

Finally, adjust your routes to point /dashboard to this new, secured controller:

# config/routes.rb

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  # ...
  get 'dashboard' => 'dashboard#show'
  # ...
end

With the Rails server still running, go to localhost:3000/dashboard in your browser and you should be redirected to the homepage.

Click the Login link and log in or sign up. Accept the consent modal that appears (for localhost only) and you should end up on at /dashboard with your user info showing.

Display Error Descriptions

Configure the application to display errors by adding the following to the production environment config:

# config/environments/production.rb

OmniAuth.config.on_failure = Proc.new { |env|
  message_key = env['omniauth.error.type']
  error_description = Rack::Utils.escape(env['omniauth.error'].error_reason)
  new_path = "#{env['SCRIPT_NAME']}#{OmniAuth.config.path_prefix}/failure?message=#{message_key}&error_description=#{error_description}"
  Rack::Response.new(['302 Moved'], 302, 'Location' => new_path).finish
}

This error means that a cookie session is being used and because the whole profile is being stored, it overflows the max-size of 4 kb. If you are unable to access the user profile and you get an error similar to NoMethodError, undefined method '[]' for nil:NilClass, try using In-Memory store for development.

Go to /config/initializers/session_store.rb and add the following:

Rails.application.config.session_store :cache_store

Go to /config/environments/development.rb and add the following:

config.cachestore = :memorystore

It is recommended that a memory store such as MemCached being used for production applications.

Under some configurations, Ruby may not be able to find certification authority certificates (CA certs).

Download the CA certs bundle to the project directory:

curl -o lib/ca-bundle.crt http://curl.haxx.se/ca/ca-bundle.crt

Add this initializer to config/initializers/fix_ssl.rb:

# config/initializers/fix_ssl.rb

require 'open-uri'
require 'net/https'

module Net
  class HTTP
    alias_method :original_use_ssl=, :use_ssl=

    def use_ssl=(flag)
      path = ( Rails.env == "development") ? "lib/ca-bundle.crt" : "/usr/lib/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt"
      self.ca_file = Rails.root.join(path).to_s
      self.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER
      self.original_use_ssl = flag
    end
  end
end

"failure message=invalid_credentials"

This issue doesn't occur when working locally but may happen in a staging or production environment. The error message may be displayed as:

omniauth: (auth0) Authentication failure! invalid_credentials: OAuth2::Error, server_error: The redirect URI is wrong. You send [wrong url], and we expected [callback url set in your app settings]

To solve this, add the following to config/environments/staging.rb or production.rb:

OmniAuth.config.full_host = "http://www.example.com"

Substitute http://www.example.com with the actual URL you'll be using in your application.

Did it work?

Any suggestion or typo? Edit on GitHub

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