Question

I am doing a POST request to my create action in my controller with a json like this:

{
  "token":"amsdaashdaksjdh" #assume this is a valid token for a user
  "post": {
     "content":"some random text"
     "title":"random title"
   }
}

However, I have a before_filter check to see if a User is in my database based on the token like this:

before_filter :authenticate


def authenticate
  @user = User.find_by_authentication_token(params[:token])
  if (@user == nil)
    render :json => {error: "invalid token"}
  end
end

It is always giving me the invalid token error…

Answer 1

A Rails before_filter halts the processing chain when the filter returns nil or false. Because your if statement is the last operation executed, the filter will return nil, when @user is not nil – and this will halt processing.

You could add an else block returning true when the user has been found.

def authenticate
  @user = User.find_by_authentication_token(params[:token])
  if @user.nil?
    render :json => {error: "invalid token"}
    false
  else
    true
  end
end