Question

I’m working through a project that is based off the Hartl tutorial. I’ve setup a user authentication model that works…mostly. Users can sign up, but I’m having a problem with the sign_in process. If a user signs out, it’s impossible for them to sign in. I’ve verified that the database is saving the user’s signup information, so the problem is with acknowleding that the user has signed up. I’ve looked at my logs, but they’re unhelpful.

This is what I get:

  Started POST "/sessions" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-04-15 13:56:46 -0500
    Processing by SessionsController#create as HTML
    Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"itOIPKPrXlymcBujKMu4Xjwvs6GlD3jteBQJf+/mYEY=", "session"=>{"email"=>"[e-mail]", "password"=>"[FILTERED]"}, "commit"=>"Sign in"}
    User Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`email` = '[e-mail]' LIMIT 1
  Rendered sessions/new.html.erb within layouts/application (1.6ms)
  Rendered layouts/_stylesheets.html.erb (2.0ms)
    User Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`id` IS NULL LIMIT 1
    CACHE (0.0ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`id` IS NULL LIMIT 1
  Rendered layouts/_header.html.erb (3.2ms)
  Rendered layouts/_footer.html.erb (0.3ms)
  Completed 200 OK in 30ms (Views: 16.1ms | ActiveRecord: 2.6ms)

But what I should see is this.

  Started POST "/sessions" for 127.0.0.1 at 2012-04-15 12:50:24 -0500

    Processing by SessionsController#create as HTML

    Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"h/M5VYBaG16sGiGHTWo26GJSU1/TlMNFjQd5TN1VZ3Y=", "session"=>{"email"=>"[e-mail]", "password"=>"[FILTERED]"}, "commit"=>"Sign in"}

    User Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`email` = '[e-mail]' LIMIT 1

    User Load (0.2ms)  SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`email` = '[e-mail]' LIMIT 1[0m

  Redirected to http://localhost:3000/users/103

  Completed 302 Found in 19ms

My questions are:
What’s the best way to go about trouble shooting this problem?
What are the “obvious” places that where I should start looking. I’m using the user authentication code found here and I’ve successfully implemented it in other projets. It’s just this one that’s giving me trouble.
Here’s my authentication code.

module SessionsHelper

  def sign_in(user)
    cookies.permanent.signed[:remember_token] = [user.id, user.salt]
    self.current_user = user
  end

  def current_user=(user)
    @current_user = user
  end

  def current_user
    @current_user ||= user_from_remember_token
  end

  def signed_in?
    current_user.present?
    p "user signed_in? method called" 
    p current_user
  end

  def sign_out
    cookies.delete(:remember_token)
    self.current_user = nil
    p "user has signed out" #Method does NOT get called
  end



  def current_user?(user)
    user == current_user
  end

  def authenticate
    deny_access unless signed_in?
  end

  def deny_access
    store_location
    redirect_to signin_path, :notice => "Please sign in to access this page."
  end

  def redirect_back_or(default)
    redirect_to(session[:return_to] || default)
    clear_return_to
  end

  private

    def user_from_remember_token
       p "Looking user up from the cookie"
      User.authenticate_with_salt(*remember_token)
    end

    def remember_token
      cookies.signed[:remember_token] || [nil, nil]
    end

    def store_location
      session[:return_to] = request.fullpath
    end

    def clear_return_to
      session[:return_to] = nil
    end
end

Answer 1

You asked for obvious, so here’s obvious…

You could print out the cookie value at the beginning of the action.

You can raise an exception at various points in the action. I like to do this. It’s more reliable than the “p” since printing can go through buffered output. I put info that I would print out into the string for the exception. The development mode also spits out helpful information like params.