Currently, we have multiple CakePHP instances on different domains sharing the same MySQL database. All instances are managed by a deployment script. We have added a Ruby on Rails app to build out some api’s and other things that are awkward to do in Ruby on Rails.
Ideally, I would like to use Devise for authentication on the Rails side. Would it be possible to share te same table for authentication in CakePHP and Rails? Devise seems to work quite differently than CakePHP Auth. Alternatively, if I could pass all authentication work to the Rails app, and somehow share the session with the CakePHP apps, that would work great too. Any ideas?
I would advise against using 2 authentication libraries on the same database table.
Idea 1
Use one of them to create a service that you can interact with from one or either app, perhaps over HTTP.
Idea 2
“Alternatively, if I could pass all authentication work to the Rails app, and somehow share the session with the CakePHP apps, that would work great too.”
Yes, that would work if you’re willing to dive into the guts of Devise or Cake. Along the same lines, you could set a non-session, encrypted cookie in one app and read it in the other one, assuming you’re on the same domain.