Question

I am working on a rails web application that also provides JSON based API for mobile devices . mobile clients are expected to first obtain a token with (email/pass), then clients will make subsequential API calls with the token.

I am pretty new to Devise, and I am looking for a Devise API look like authenticate(email, pass) and expect it to return true/false, then based on that I will either create and hand back the token or return a decline message. but seems Devise doesn’t provide something like this.

I am aware that Devise 1.3 provides JSON based auth, but that’s a bit different from what I need – I need to generate token and handle back to client, then after that auth is done using the token instead.

Can someone please give some pointers?

Answer 1

There is a devise configuration called :token_authenticatable. So if you add that to the devise method in your “user”, then you can authenticate in your API just by calling

"/api/v1/recipes?qs=sweet&auth_token=[@user.auth_token]"

You’ll probably want this in your user as well:

before_save :ensure_authentication_token

UPDATE (with API authorization code)

The method you’re looking for are:

resource = User.find_for_database_authentication(:login=>params[:user_login][:login])
resource.valid_password?(params[:user_login][:password])

here’s my gist with a full scale JSON/API login with devise