Devise Logo

Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden. It:

  • Is Rack based;
  • Is a complete MVC solution based on Rails engines;
  • Allows you to have multiple models signed in at the same time;
  • Is based on a modularity concept: use only what you really need.

It's composed of 10 modules:

  • Database Authenticatable: hashes and stores a password in the database to validate the authenticity of a user while signing in. The authentication can be done both through POST requests or HTTP Basic Authentication.
  • Omniauthable: adds OmniAuth (https://github.com/omniauth/omniauth) support.
  • Confirmable: sends emails with confirmation instructions and verifies whether an account is already confirmed during sign in.
  • Recoverable: resets the user password and sends reset instructions.
  • Registerable: handles signing up users through a registration process, also allowing them to edit and destroy their account.
  • Rememberable: manages generating and clearing a token for remembering the user from a saved cookie.
  • Trackable: tracks sign in count, timestamps and IP address.
  • Timeoutable: expires sessions that have not been active in a specified period of time.
  • Validatable: provides validations of email and password. It's optional and can be customized, so you're able to define your own validations.
  • Lockable: locks an account after a specified number of failed sign-in attempts. Can unlock via email or after a specified time period.

Table of Contents

Information

The Devise wiki

The Devise Wiki has lots of additional information about Devise including many "how-to" articles and answers to the most frequently asked questions. Please browse the Wiki after finishing this README:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki

Bug reports

If you discover a problem with Devise, we would like to know about it. However, we ask that you please review these guidelines before submitting a bug report:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki/Bug-reports

If you have discovered a security related bug, please do NOT use the GitHub issue tracker. Send an email to [email protected].

StackOverflow and Mailing List

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please use StackOverflow instead of the GitHub issue tracker:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/devise

The deprecated mailing list can still be read on

https://groups.google.com/group/plataformatec-devise

RDocs

You can view the Devise documentation in RDoc format here:

http://rubydoc.info/github/heartcombo/devise/main/frames

If you need to use Devise with previous versions of Rails, you can always run "gem server" from the command line after you install the gem to access the old documentation.

Example applications

There are a few example applications available on GitHub that demonstrate various features of Devise with different versions of Rails. You can view them here:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki/Example-Applications

Extensions

Our community has created a number of extensions that add functionality above and beyond what is included with Devise. You can view a list of available extensions and add your own here:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki/Extensions

Contributing

We hope that you will consider contributing to Devise. Please read this short overview for some information about how to get started:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki/Contributing

You will usually want to write tests for your changes. To run the test suite, go into Devise's top-level directory and run bundle install and bin/test. Devise works with multiple Ruby and Rails versions, and ActiveRecord and Mongoid ORMs, which means you can run the test suite with some modifiers: DEVISE_ORM and BUNDLE_GEMFILE.

DEVISE_ORM

Since Devise supports both Mongoid and ActiveRecord, we rely on this variable to run specific code for each ORM. The default value of DEVISE_ORM is active_record. To run the tests for Mongoid, you can pass mongoid:

DEVISE_ORM=mongoid bin/test

==> Devise.orm = :mongoid

When running the tests for Mongoid, you will need to have a MongoDB server (version 2.0 or newer) running on your system.

Please note that the command output will show the variable value being used.

BUNDLE_GEMFILE

We can use this variable to tell bundler what Gemfile it should use (instead of the one in the current directory). Inside the gemfiles directory, we have one for each version of Rails we support. When you send us a pull request, it may happen that the test suite breaks using some of them. If that's the case, you can simulate the same environment using the BUNDLE_GEMFILE variable. For example, if the tests broke using Ruby 2.4.2 and Rails 4.1, you can do the following:

rbenv shell 2.4.2 # or rvm use 2.4.2
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.1-stable bundle install
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.1-stable bin/test

You can also combine both of them if the tests broke for Mongoid:

BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.1-stable bundle install
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/Gemfile.rails-4.1-stable DEVISE_ORM=mongoid bin/test

Running tests

Devise uses Mini Test as test framework.

  • Running all tests:

    bin/test

  • Running tests for an specific file:

    bin/test test/models/trackable_test.rb

  • Running a specific test given a regex:

    bin/test test/models/trackable_test.rb:16

Starting with Rails?

If you are building your first Rails application, we recommend you do not use Devise. Devise requires a good understanding of the Rails Framework. In such cases, we advise you to start a simple authentication system from scratch. Here's a few resources that should help you get started:

Once you have solidified your understanding of Rails and authentication mechanisms, we assure you Devise will be very pleasant to work with. :smiley:

Getting started

Devise 4.0 works with Rails 4.1 onwards. Run:

bundle add devise

Next, you need to run the generator:

rails generate devise:install

At this point, a number of instructions will appear in the console. Among these instructions, you'll need to set up the default URL options for the Devise mailer in each environment. Here is a possible configuration for config/environments/development.rb:

config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { host: 'localhost', port: 3000 }

The generator will install an initializer which describes ALL of Devise's configuration options. It is imperative that you take a look at it. When you are done, you are ready to add Devise to any of your models using the generator.

In the following command you will replace MODEL with the class name used for the application’s users (it’s frequently User but could also be Admin). This will create a model (if one does not exist) and configure it with the default Devise modules. The generator also configures your config/routes.rb file to point to the Devise controller.

rails generate devise MODEL

Next, check the MODEL for any additional configuration options you might want to add, such as confirmable or lockable. If you add an option, be sure to inspect the migration file (created by the generator if your ORM supports them) and uncomment the appropriate section. For example, if you add the confirmable option in the model, you'll need to uncomment the Confirmable section in the migration.

Then run rails db:migrate

You should restart your application after changing Devise's configuration options (this includes stopping spring). Otherwise, you will run into strange errors, for example, users being unable to login and route helpers being undefined.

Controller filters and helpers

Devise will create some helpers to use inside your controllers and views. To set up a controller with user authentication, just add this before_action (assuming your devise model is 'User'):

before_action :authenticate_user!

For Rails 5, note that protect_from_forgery is no longer prepended to the before_action chain, so if you have set authenticate_user before protect_from_forgery, your request will result in "Can't verify CSRF token authenticity." To resolve this, either change the order in which you call them, or use protect_from_forgery prepend: true.

If your devise model is something other than User, replace "_user" with "_yourmodel". The same logic applies to the instructions below.

To verify if a user is signed in, use the following helper:

user_signed_in?

For the current signed-in user, this helper is available:

current_user

You can access the session for this scope:

user_session

After signing in a user, confirming the account or updating the password, Devise will look for a scoped root path to redirect to. For instance, when using a :user resource, the user_root_path will be used if it exists; otherwise, the default root_path will be used. This means that you need to set the root inside your routes:

root to: 'home#index'

You can also override after_sign_in_path_for and after_sign_out_path_for to customize your redirect hooks.

Notice that if your Devise model is called Member instead of User, for example, then the helpers available are:

before_action :authenticate_member!

member_signed_in?

current_member

member_session

Configuring Models

The Devise method in your models also accepts some options to configure its modules. For example, you can choose the cost of the hashing algorithm with:

devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :confirmable, :recoverable, stretches: 13

Besides :stretches, you can define :pepper, :encryptor, :confirm_within, :remember_for, :timeout_in, :unlock_in among other options. For more details, see the initializer file that was created when you invoked the "devise:install" generator described above. This file is usually located at /config/initializers/devise.rb.

Strong Parameters

The Parameter Sanitizer API has changed for Devise 4 :warning:

For previous Devise versions see https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/tree/3-stable#strong-parameters

When you customize your own views, you may end up adding new attributes to forms. Rails 4 moved the parameter sanitization from the model to the controller, causing Devise to handle this concern at the controller as well.

There are just three actions in Devise that allow any set of parameters to be passed down to the model, therefore requiring sanitization. Their names and default permitted parameters are:

  • sign_in (Devise::SessionsController#create) - Permits only the authentication keys (like email)
  • sign_up (Devise::RegistrationsController#create) - Permits authentication keys plus password and password_confirmation
  • account_update (Devise::RegistrationsController#update) - Permits authentication keys plus password, password_confirmation and current_password

In case you want to permit additional parameters (the lazy way™), you can do so using a simple before action in your ApplicationController:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :configure_permitted_parameters, if: :devise_controller?

  protected

  def configure_permitted_parameters
    devise_parameter_sanitizer.permit(:sign_up, keys: [:username])
  end
end

The above works for any additional fields where the parameters are simple scalar types. If you have nested attributes (say you're using accepts_nested_attributes_for), then you will need to tell devise about those nestings and types:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :configure_permitted_parameters, if: :devise_controller?

  protected

  def configure_permitted_parameters
    devise_parameter_sanitizer.permit(:sign_up, keys: [:first_name, :last_name, address_attributes: [:country, :state, :city, :area, :postal_code]])
  end
end

Devise allows you to completely change Devise defaults or invoke custom behavior by passing a block:

To permit simple scalar values for username and email, use this

def configure_permitted_parameters
  devise_parameter_sanitizer.permit(:sign_in) do |user_params|
    user_params.permit(:username, :email)
  end
end

If you have some checkboxes that express the roles a user may take on registration, the browser will send those selected checkboxes as an array. An array is not one of Strong Parameters' permitted scalars, so we need to configure Devise in the following way:

def configure_permitted_parameters
  devise_parameter_sanitizer.permit(:sign_up) do |user_params|
    user_params.permit({ roles: [] }, :email, :password, :password_confirmation)
  end
end

For the list of permitted scalars, and how to declare permitted keys in nested hashes and arrays, see

https://github.com/rails/strong_parameters#nested-parameters

If you have multiple Devise models, you may want to set up a different parameter sanitizer per model. In this case, we recommend inheriting from Devise::ParameterSanitizer and adding your own logic:

class User::ParameterSanitizer < Devise::ParameterSanitizer
  def initialize(*)
    super
    permit(:sign_up, keys: [:username, :email])
  end
end

And then configure your controllers to use it:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  protected

  def devise_parameter_sanitizer
    if resource_class == User
      User::ParameterSanitizer.new(User, :user, params)
    else
      super # Use the default one
    end
  end
end

The example above overrides the permitted parameters for the user to be both :username and :email. The non-lazy way to configure parameters would be by defining the before filter above in a custom controller. We detail how to configure and customize controllers in some sections below.

Configuring views

We built Devise to help you quickly develop an application that uses authentication. However, we don't want to be in your way when you need to customize it.

Since Devise is an engine, all its views are packaged inside the gem. These views will help you get started, but after some time you may want to change them. If this is the case, you just need to invoke the following generator, and it will copy all views to your application:

rails generate devise:views

If you have more than one Devise model in your application (such as User and Admin), you will notice that Devise uses the same views for all models. Fortunately, Devise offers an easy way to customize views. All you need to do is set config.scoped_views = true inside the config/initializers/devise.rb file.

After doing so, you will be able to have views based on the role like users/sessions/new and admins/sessions/new. If no view is found within the scope, Devise will use the default view at devise/sessions/new. You can also use the generator to generate scoped views:

rails generate devise:views users

If you would like to generate only a few sets of views, like the ones for the registerable and confirmable module, you can pass a list of views to the generator with the -v flag.

rails generate devise:views -v registrations confirmations

Configuring controllers

If the customization at the views level is not enough, you can customize each controller by following these steps:

  1. Create your custom controllers using the generator which requires a scope:

    rails generate devise:controllers [scope]

    If you specify users as the scope, controllers will be created in app/controllers/users/. And the sessions controller will look like this:

    class Users::SessionsController < Devise::SessionsController
  # GET /resource/sign_in
  # def new
  #   super
  # end
  ...
end

    Use the -c flag to specify one or more controllers, for example: rails generate devise:controllers users -c sessions)

  2. Tell the router to use this controller:

    devise_for :users, controllers: { sessions: 'users/sessions' }

  3. Recommended but not required: copy (or move) the views from devise/sessions to users/sessions. Rails will continue using the views from devise/sessions due to inheritance if you skip this step, but having the views matching the controller(s) keeps things consistent.

  4. Finally, change or extend the desired controller actions.

    You can completely override a controller action:

    class Users::SessionsController < Devise::SessionsController
  def create
    # custom sign-in code
  end
end

    Or you can simply add new behavior to it:

    class Users::SessionsController < Devise::SessionsController
  def create
    super do |resource|
      BackgroundWorker.trigger(resource)
    end
  end
end

    This is useful for triggering background jobs or logging events during certain actions.

Remember that Devise uses flash messages to let users know if sign in was successful or unsuccessful. Devise expects your application to call flash[:notice] and flash[:alert] as appropriate. Do not print the entire flash hash, print only specific keys. In some circumstances, Devise adds a :timedout key to the flash hash, which is not meant for display. Remove this key from the hash if you intend to print the entire hash.

Configuring routes

Devise also ships with default routes. If you need to customize them, you should probably be able to do it through the devise_for method. It accepts several options like :class_name, :path_prefix and so on, including the possibility to change path names for I18n:

devise_for :users, path: 'auth', path_names: { sign_in: 'login', sign_out: 'logout', password: 'secret', confirmation: 'verification', unlock: 'unblock', registration: 'register', sign_up: 'cmon_let_me_in' }

Be sure to check devise_for documentation for details.

If you have the need for more deep customization, for instance to also allow "/sign_in" besides "/users/sign_in", all you need to do is create your routes normally and wrap them in a devise_scope block in the router:

devise_scope :user do
  get 'sign_in', to: 'devise/sessions#new'
end

This way, you tell Devise to use the scope :user when "/sign_in" is accessed. Notice devise_scope is also aliased as as in your router.

Please note: You will still need to add devise_for in your routes in order to use helper methods such as current_user.

devise_for :users, skip: :all

Hotwire/Turbo

Devise integrates with Hotwire/Turbo by treating such requests as navigational, and configuring certain responses for errors and redirects to match the expected behavior. New apps are generated with the following response configuration by default, and existing apps may opt-in by adding the config to their Devise initializers:

Devise.setup do |config|
  # ...
  # When using Devise with Hotwire/Turbo, the http status for error responses
  # and some redirects must match the following. The default in Devise for existing
  # apps is `200 OK` and `302 Found respectively`, but new apps are generated with
  # these new defaults that match Hotwire/Turbo behavior.
  # Note: These might become the new default in future versions of Devise.
  config.responder.error_status = :unprocessable_entity
  config.responder.redirect_status = :see_other
end

Important: these custom responses require the responders gem version to be 3.1.0 or higher, please make sure you update it if you're going to use this configuration. Check this upgrade guide for more info.

Note: the above statuses configuration may become the default for Devise in a future release.

There are a couple other changes you might need to make in your app to work with Hotwire/Turbo, if you're migrating from rails-ujs:

  • The data-confirm option that adds a confirmation modal to buttons/forms before submission needs to change to data-turbo-confirm, so that Turbo handles those appropriately.
  • The data-method option that sets the request method for link submissions needs to change to data-turbo-method. This is not necessary for button_to or forms since Turbo can handle those.

If you're setting up Devise to sign out via :delete, and you're using links (instead of buttons wrapped in a form) to sign out with the method: :delete option, they will need to be updated as described above. (Devise does not provide sign out links/buttons in its shared views.)

Make sure to inspect your views looking for those, and change appropriately.

I18n

Devise uses flash messages with I18n, in conjunction with the flash keys :notice and :alert. To customize your app, you can set up your locale file:

en:
  devise:
    sessions:
      signed_in: 'Signed in successfully.'

You can also create distinct messages based on the resource you've configured using the singular name given in routes:

en:
  devise:
    sessions:
      user:
        signed_in: 'Welcome user, you are signed in.'
      admin:
        signed_in: 'Hello admin!'

The Devise mailer uses a similar pattern to create subject messages:

en:
  devise:
    mailer:
      confirmation_instructions:
        subject: 'Hello everybody!'
        user_subject: 'Hello User! Please confirm your email'
      reset_password_instructions:
        subject: 'Reset instructions'

Take a look at our locale file to check all available messages. You may also be interested in one of the many translations that are available on our wiki:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/wiki/I18n

Caution: Devise Controllers inherit from ApplicationController. If your app uses multiple locales, you should be sure to set I18n.locale in ApplicationController.

Test helpers

Devise includes some test helpers for controller and integration tests. In order to use them, you need to include the respective module in your test cases/specs.

Controller tests

Controller tests require that you include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers on your test case or its parent ActionController::TestCase superclass. For Rails versions prior to 5, include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers instead, since the superclass for controller tests was changed to ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest (for more details, see the Integration tests section).

class PostsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers # Rails >= 5
end

class PostsControllerTest < ActionController::TestCase
  include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers # Rails < 5
end

If you're using RSpec, you can put the following inside a file named spec/support/devise.rb or in your spec/spec_helper.rb (or spec/rails_helper.rb if you are using rspec-rails):

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers, type: :controller
  config.include Devise::Test::ControllerHelpers, type: :view
end

Just be sure that this inclusion is made after the require 'rspec/rails' directive.

Now you are ready to use the sign_in and sign_out methods on your controller tests:

 @user
 @user, scope: :admin

If you are testing Devise internal controllers or a controller that inherits from Devise's, you need to tell Devise which mapping should be used before a request. This is necessary because Devise gets this information from the router, but since controller tests do not pass through the router, it needs to be stated explicitly. For example, if you are testing the user scope, simply use:

test 'GET new' do
  # Mimic the router behavior of setting the Devise scope through the env.
  @request.env['devise.mapping'] = Devise.mappings[:user]

  # Use the sign_in helper to sign in a fixture `User` record.
   users(:alice)

  get :new

  # assert something
end

Integration tests

Integration test helpers are available by including the Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers module.

class PostsTests < ActionDispatch::IntegrationTest
  include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers
end

Now you can use the following sign_in and sign_out methods in your integration tests:

 users(:bob)
 users(:bob), scope: :admin

sign_out :user

RSpec users can include the IntegrationHelpers module on their :feature specs.

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers, type: :feature
end

Unlike controller tests, integration tests do not need to supply the devise.mapping env value, as the mapping can be inferred by the routes that are executed in your tests.

You can read more about testing your Rails 3 - Rails 4 controllers with RSpec in the wiki:

OmniAuth

Devise comes with OmniAuth support out of the box to authenticate with other providers. To use it, simply specify your OmniAuth configuration in config/initializers/devise.rb:

config.omniauth :github, 'APP_ID', 'APP_SECRET', scope: 'user,public_repo'

You can read more about OmniAuth support in the wiki:

Configuring multiple models

Devise allows you to set up as many Devise models as you want. If you want to have an Admin model with just authentication and timeout features, in addition to the User model above, just run:

# Create a migration with the required fields
create_table :admins do |t|
  t.string :email
  t.string :encrypted_password
  t.timestamps null: false
end

# Inside your Admin model
devise :database_authenticatable, :timeoutable

# Inside your routes
devise_for :admins

# Inside your protected controller
before_action :authenticate_admin!

# Inside your controllers and views
admin_signed_in?
current_admin
admin_session

Alternatively, you can simply run the Devise generator.

Keep in mind that those models will have completely different routes. They do not and cannot share the same controller for sign in, sign out and so on. In case you want to have different roles sharing the same actions, we recommend that you use a role-based approach, by either providing a role column or using a dedicated gem for authorization.

ActiveJob Integration

If you are using Rails 4.2 and ActiveJob to deliver ActionMailer messages in the background through a queuing back-end, you can send Devise emails through your existing queue by overriding the send_devise_notification method in your model.

def send_devise_notification(notification, *args)
  devise_mailer.send(notification, self, *args).deliver_later
end

Password reset tokens and Rails logs

If you enable the Recoverable module, note that a stolen password reset token could give an attacker access to your application. Devise takes effort to generate random, secure tokens, and stores only token digests in the database, never plaintext. However the default logging behavior in Rails can cause plaintext tokens to leak into log files:

  1. Action Mailer logs the entire contents of all outgoing emails to the DEBUG level. Password reset tokens delivered to users in email will be leaked.
  2. Active Job logs all arguments to every enqueued job at the INFO level. If you configure Devise to use deliver_later to send password reset emails, password reset tokens will be leaked.

Rails sets the production logger level to INFO by default. Consider changing your production logger level to WARN if you wish to prevent tokens from being leaked into your logs. In config/environments/production.rb:

config.log_level = :warn

Other ORMs

Devise supports ActiveRecord (default) and Mongoid. To select another ORM, simply require it in the initializer file.

Rails API Mode

Rails 5+ has a built-in API Mode which optimizes Rails for use as an API (only). Devise is somewhat able to handle applications that are built in this mode without additional modifications in the sense that it should not raise exceptions and the like. But some issues may still arise during development/testing, as we still don't know the full extent of this compatibility. (For more information, see issue #4947)

Supported Authentication Strategies

API-only applications don't support browser-based authentication via cookies, which is devise's default. Yet, devise can still provide authentication out of the box in those cases with the http_authenticatable strategy, which uses HTTP Basic Auth and authenticates the user on each request. (For more info, see this wiki article for How To: Use HTTP Basic Authentication)

The devise default for HTTP Auth is disabled, so it will need to be enabled in the devise initializer for the database strategy:

config.http_authenticatable = [:database]

This restriction does not limit you from implementing custom warden strategies, either in your application or via gem-based extensions for devise. A common authentication strategy for APIs is token-based authentication. For more information on extending devise to support this type of authentication and others, see the wiki article for Simple Token Authentication Examples and alternatives or this blog post on Custom authentication methods with Devise.

Testing

API Mode changes the order of the middleware stack, and this can cause problems for Devise::Test::IntegrationHelpers. This problem usually surfaces as an undefined method `[]=' for nil:NilClass error when using integration test helpers, such as #sign_in. The solution is simply to reorder the middlewares by adding the following to test.rb:

Rails.application.config.middleware.insert_before Warden::Manager, ActionDispatch::Cookies
Rails.application.config.middleware.insert_before Warden::Manager, ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore

For a deeper understanding of this, review this issue.

Additionally be mindful that without views supported, some email-based flows from Confirmable, Recoverable and Lockable are not supported directly at this time.

Additional information

Warden

Devise is based on Warden, which is a general Rack authentication framework created by Daniel Neighman. We encourage you to read more about Warden here:

https://github.com/wardencommunity/warden

Contributors

We have a long list of valued contributors. Check them all at:

https://github.com/heartcombo/devise/graphs/contributors

License

MIT License. Copyright 2020-2023 Rafael França, Leonardo Tegon, Carlos Antônio da Silva. Copyright 2009-2019 Plataformatec.

The Devise logo is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.