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Asked: 2026-05-11T02:36:48+00:00

I need to build several Rails applications for one client. I would like to

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I need to build several Rails applications for one client. I would like to give them all the same user authentication system so that users will not have to remember separate login credentials for each app. These are strictly internal applications. OpenID is not an option for this organization.

I am thinking of creating a central Rails application to handle authentication. The other apps would take the submitted user id and password and send a request to the auth app and get back perhaps a string of YAML describing the user and their roles.

Is that a reasonable approach?

Is there a standard solution to this problem that I should be aware of?

(Note that due to organizational constraints I have to solve this on my own using one RedHat Linux 5 server running MySQL, Apache, and Rails.)

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  1. Sounds reasonable to me. I might set up the authentication application on its own as you describe, and then use ActiveResource in the client applications to access the authentication as a web service. You could essentially have your own in-house OpenID-style system.

    If you haven’t used ActiveResource before, Railscasts 94 and 95 are a good place to start.

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