Question

I am trying to force a user to login once they call this update action in my article controller (I am trying to work with gradual engagement) but once they login, I want to still call this action instead of halting.

 def update
    @article.attributes = params[:article]
    @article.save

    #store this article as a session variable
    session[:pending_article] = @article.body

    respond_with(@article, :location => article_url(@article))
  end

Right now I am using a before_filter for the action that requires the user to login

 def require_user
    unless current_user
      store_location
      flash[:notice] = "You must be logged in to access this page"
      redirect_to login_url
      return false
    end
  end

However, I understand that before filters halt the original action once they redirect, so update never gets called. Basically, I want a user to be logged in to save an article but I want to save their work so I’m storing the article body in a session variable which I grab later. Is there a better way to require a user to login for an action but call it afterwards anyway?

Answer 1

In your require_user method you can do something like this:

session[:article] = params[:article]

Then in your login method (/sessions/create?) do this:

# this should take you back /articles/new,
# you may have to move your call to store_location 
# or manually set session[:return_to]
redirect_back_or_default 

Then in ArticlesController#new

def new
  @article = Article.new(session[:article] || {})
end

Then the saved article params from the session are still there so the form is pre-filled out.

Be careful storing too much content in the session though. In Rails the default session store is a cookie, and cookies only hold about 4k of data. You may need to change your session store to pull this off.