Question

The authlogic rails gem is doing a LOWER in the sql query.

SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE (LOWER(`users`.email) = '[e-mail]') LIMIT 1

I want to get rid of the LOWER part since it seems to be slowing down the query by quite a bit.
I’d prefer to just lower the case in the code since this query seems to be expensive.

I’m not sure where to change this behavior in authlogic.

Thanks!

Answer 1

This comment is from lib/authlogic/acts_as_authentic/login.rb above the find_by_smart_case_login_field method:

    # This method allows you to find a record with the given login. If you notice, with ActiveRecord you have the
    # validates_uniqueness_of validation function. They give you a :case_sensitive option. I handle this in the same
    # manner that they handle that. If you are using the login field and set false for the :case_sensitive option in
    # validates_uniqueness_of_login_field_options this method will modify the query to look something like:
    #
    #   first(:conditions => ["LOWER(#{quoted_table_name}.#{login_field}) = ?", login.downcase])
    #
    # If you don't specify this it calls the good old find_by_* method:
    #
    #   find_by_login(login)
    #
    # The above also applies for using email as your login, except that you need to set the :case_sensitive in
    # validates_uniqueness_of_email_field_options to false.
    #
    # The only reason I need to do the above is for Postgres and SQLite since they perform case sensitive searches with the
    # find_by_* methods.

Are you setting case_sensitive = false in your email validation? If so, taking that out should solve this without you having to patch any code.