Rails, Devise: If an anonymous user tries to access a page - redirect user to sign in page

Question

I am using Devise to authenticate users in my rails app. I have couple of resources that I want only accessible to authenticated users. If unauthenticated users try to access such resources, I would like them to return to the sign in page.

I was wondering what would the best way of doing this. I was thinking:

• I could add a check in application_controller.rb - however, if I add this check, it may also apply to the sign in page, and hence we get into a loop. (enter sign in page -> user not logged in -> redirect to sign in page ...)

• Add an attribute on top of every controller method, eg. @authenticated.

Answer 1

Did you read about the authenticate_user! filter? You can find the docs at github (Search for "Controller filters and helpers").

Add this as in the relevant controllers. You can restrict it to certain actions by providing :only => [ :show ] or :except => [ :index ] as further parameters to it.