Question

Is there a way to upload an app, but only have it accessible by me? Or perhaps by a specific set of IP’s?

Reason being, we want to run a few private online tests before opening the app up to the general public. So far I have come up with the following code:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_filter :restrict_access

  def restrict_access
    whitelist = ['127.0.0.123', '10.0.1.7', '10.0.1.8'].freeze

    unless( whitelist.include? request.env['REMOTE_ADDR'] )
      render :file => "#{Rails.public_path}/500.html", :status => :unauthorized
      return
    end
  end
end

However, the above code still renders the main layout file (app/views/layouts/application.html.erb) which exposes the logo and footer. For un-authorised access we want to display a page that says something like “Ooops, we are still doing a few tests and will be public soon!”. No logo of the site, no nothing. Just a simple message.

We are using devise as our authentication gem. We don’t want to add authentication functionality just to restrict access for private beta testing. We want to do it by IP instead.

Is such a thing possible? Perhaps the code above just needs working on? Or is there a gem that we can use solely for this requirement?

Answer 1

If you’re deploying on Apache or Nginx, this should be easy enough to configure in the relevant site config files. Doesn’t need to be in the app itself, in that case.

I’m not totally sure what the issue is with your existing code. Are you saying that the filter seems to be ignored, or that the file renders within the layout? If it’s the latter, specifying :layout => false as a render option should take care of that.