Simple authentication for Sinatra in Rails Metal

Using Sinatra:Base to build Rails Metal is a joy and really speeds up the process.

I needed to protect API access with simple authentication and after trying a few routes I found this technique:

before do

if request.env['PATH_INFO'].include?('/api/cool_stuff')

Rack::Auth::Basic.new(request, 'API Access') do |username, password|

Account.authenticate(username, password)

end

The trick was keeping the authentication from triggering for requests not meant for this path.

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Jun 01, 2010

amikhailov said...

I'm doing authentication by that way:

before do
if @env['PATH_INFO'].match(/^\/api/) && user_id = @env['rack.session']['user_credentials_id']
sql = "select id from users where id = '#{user_id}'"
raise Sinatra::NotFound if User.connection.select_all(sql).blank?
else
raise Sinatra::NotFound
end
end

Jun 02, 2010

Lon Baker said...

Amik, thanks. I like the way you incorporated the session/cookie check into the process. I like to keep SQL in my models, so I would pass the credentials as an argument to a model method.

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Simple authentication for Sinatra in Rails Metal

Lon Baker