Question

Is it possible to have AuthLogic validate a password confirmation if present, but otherwise ignore it? So, if my params are as following I’d like a failure:

{ user: { password: "abcd", password_confirmation: "defg" }

However if the parameters are instead as following I’d like a success:

{ user: { password: "abcdefgh" } }

Thanks!

Answer 1

it’s not an AuthLogic’s matter, this code should do the trick:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...

  def update_without_password_confirmation(params={})
    params.delete(:password) if params[:password_confirmation].blank?
    params.delete(:password_confirmation) if params[:password].blank?

    update_attributes(params)
   end      
end

then call this method from controller when you need to update attributes on User. If User did not specify a password_confirmation, it will be ignored.
you can use several other techniques to get same effect, for example, using the before_validation(:on => :update) callback.

UPDATE: if you want to skip password validations at all, acts_as_authentic accepts a block to customize its behaviour:

clas User < AR::Base
  acts_as_authentic do |u|
    u.require_password_confirmation=false # you can also use :if => some_condition
    u.validate_password_field=false
  end
end

this is a bit un-documented 😛 check this file:
https://github.com/binarylogic/authlogic/blob/master/lib/authlogic/acts_as_authentic/password.rb