SimpleCaptcha

SimpleCaptcha is the simplest and a robust captcha plugin. Its implementation requires adding up a single line in views and in controllers/models. SimpleCaptcha is available to be used with Rails 3 or above and also it provides the backward compatibility with previous versions of Rails.

Features

  • Zero FileSystem usage(secret code moved to db-store and image storage removed).

  • Provides various image styles.

  • Provides three level of complexity of images.

  • Works absolutely fine in distributed environment(session and db based implementation works fine in distributed environment).

  • Implementation is as easy as just writing a single line in your view. “<%= show_simple_captcha %>” within the ‘form’ tags.

  • Flexible DOM and CSS handling(There is a separate view partial for rednering SimpleCaptcha DOM elements).

  • Automated removal of 1 hour old unmatched simple_captcha data.

Requirements

Installation

gem "galetahub-simple_captcha", :require => "simple_captcha"

or

gem 'simple_captcha', :git => 'git://github.com/galetahub/simple-captcha.git'

Setup

After installation, follow these simple steps to setup the plugin. The setup will depend on the version of rails your application is using.

rails generate simple_captcha

rake db:migrate

Usage

Controller Based

Add the following line in the file “app/controllers/application.rb”

ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  include SimpleCaptcha::ControllerHelpers
end

In the view file within the form tags add this code

<%= show_simple_captcha %>

and in the controller’s action authenticate it as

if simple_captcha_valid?
  do this
else
  do that
end

Model Based

In the view file within the form tags write this code

<%= show_simple_captcha(:object=>"user") %>

and in the model class add this code

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  apply_simple_captcha
end

FormBuilder helper

<%= form_for @user do |form| -%>
  ...
  <%= form.simple_captcha :label => "Enter numbers.." %>
  ...
<% end -%>

Validating with captcha

NOTE: @user.valid? will still work as it should, it will not validate the captcha code.

@user.valid_with_captcha?

Saving with captcha

NOTE: @user.save will still work as it should, it will not validate the captcha code.

@user.save_with_captcha

Formtastic integration

SimpleCaptcha detects if your use Formtastic and appends “SimpleCaptcha::CustomFormBuilder”.

<%= form.input :captcha, :as => :simple_captcha %>

Options & Examples

View Options

  • label - provides the custom text b/w the image and the text field, the default is “type the code from the image”

  • object - the name of the object of the model class, to implement the model based captcha.

  • code_type - return numeric only if set to ‘numeric’

Global options

  • image_style - provides the specific image style for the captcha image.

There are eight different styles available with the plugin as…

1) simply_blue
2) simply_red
3) simply_green
4) charcoal_grey
5) embosed_silver
6) all_black
7) distorted_black
8) almost_invisible

Default style is ‘simply_blue’. You can also specify ‘random’ to select the random image style.

  • distortion - handles the complexity of the image. The :distortion can be set to ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’. Default is ‘low’.

Create “rails_root/config/initializers/simple_captcha.rb”

SimpleCaptcha.setup do |sc|
  # default: 100x28
  sc.image_size = '120x40'

  # default: 5
  sc.length = 6

  # default: simply_blue
  # possible values:
  # 'embosed_silver',
  # 'simply_red',
  # 'simply_green',
  # 'simply_blue',
  # 'distorted_black',
  # 'all_black',
  # 'charcoal_grey',
  # 'almost_invisible'
  # 'random'
  sc.image_style = 'simply_green'

  # default: low
  # possible values: 'low', 'medium', 'high', 'random'
  sc.distortion = 'medium'
end

You can add your own style:

SimpleCaptcha.setup do |sc|
  sc.image_style = 'mycaptha'
  sc.add_image_style('mycaptha', [
      "-background '#F4F7F8'",
      "-fill '#86818B'",
      "-border 1",
      "-bordercolor '#E0E2E3'"])
end

You can provide the path where image_magick is installed as well:

SimpleCaptcha.setup do |sc|
  sc.image_magick_path = '/usr/bin' # you can check this from console by running: which convert
end

You can provide the path where should be stored tmp files. It’s usefull when you dont have acces to /tmp (default directory)

SimpleCaptcha.setup do |sc|
  sc.tmp_path = '/tmp' # or somewhere in project eg. Rails.root.join('tmp/simple_captcha').to_s, make shure directory exists
end

How to change the CSS for SimpleCaptcha DOM elements?

You can change the CSS of the SimpleCaptcha DOM elements as per your need in this file.

/app/views/simple_captcha/_simple_captcha.erb

View’s Examples

Controller Based Example

<%= show_simple_captcha %>

<%= show_simple_captcha(:label => "human authentication") %>

Model Based Example

<%= show_simple_captcha(:object => 'user', :label => "human authentication") %>

Model Options

  • message - provides the custom message on failure of captcha authentication the default is “Secret Code did not match with the Image”

  • add_to_base - if set to true, appends the error message to the base.

Model’s Example
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  apply_simple_captcha
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  apply_simple_captcha :message => "The secret Image and code were different", :add_to_base => true
end

I18n

simple_captcha:
  message:
    default: "Secret Code did not match with the Image"
    user: "The secret Image and code were different"

Who’s who?

Enjoy the simplest captcha implementation.

Author: Sur

Blog: expressica.com

Contact: [email protected]

Plugin Homepage: expressica.com/simple_captcha

Plugin update for rails 3: github.com/galetahub

Any feedback/comment/issue/donation is welcome!