Question

has_secure_password in rails works well for signing up users by checking :password and :password_confirmation then logging a :password_digest field in the database. However, if I want to be able to verify the email address (by sending an email confirmation) how would I be able to do this with rails?

Answer 1

Generally to verify an email address, you send an email to the concerned email address ( with a link ) and the user clicks a link / verifies it. The link generally contains a token used to uniquely identify that email address. So you can add a verification_token field to your model, may be add verification_email_sent_at and verified_at fields as well, to keep track and use a controller action

   def verify_email
     @user = User.find_by_verification_token(params[:verification_token])
     if @user
        @user.verification_token = nil
        @user.verification_email_sent_at = nil
        @user.verified_at = Time.now
        @user.save
        # above lines can be part of method like @user.verify!
        redirect_to "/"
     else
        ...
     end
   end

Also I’d strongly suggest instead of building your authentication solution take a look at

https://github.com/plataformatec/devise

Its pretty simple to use.