You must have grown tired of seeing those “Remember me for two weeks” check box on every web site’s login form. Ever wonder how to do that in Ruby on Rails?

It turns out, you can make use of ActionController’s session management methods for this purpose:

• Set ::ActionController::Base.session_options[:session_expires] to the maximum amount of time to remember the session
• Call reset_session whenever the user logs out

Here’s a complete source code for of controller that does exactly this (and only this):

class MainController < ApplicationController

  def index
    render :inline => %Q{
<%= h(flash[:notice]) %><br/>
<% if session[:me] %>
  You are logged on as <%=h (session[:me]) %>. <%= button_to 'Logout', {:action => 'logout'} %>
<% else %>
  <% form_tag({:action => 'login'}) do %>
    Please login: <%= text_field_tag 'username' %>
    <label for="remember"><%= check_box_tag 'remember' %> Remember me</label>
    <%= submit_tag %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>
    }
  end

  def login
    ::ActionController::Base.session_options[:session_expires] =
      params[:remember] ? 2.weeks.from_now : nil
    session[:me] = params[:username]
    flash[:notice] = 'Login successful.'
    redirect_to :action => 'index'
  end

  def logout
    reset_session
    flash[:notice] = 'You have logged out'
    redirect_to :action => 'index'
  end

end

To try the above application, create a skeleton Rails application (e.g. by running rails myapp) then put the above code into app/controllers/main_controller.rb. Run the script/server script then you should be able to check it out by browsing http://localhost:3000/main.

Sweet!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Ajax, Opinions, Rails, Ruby, Tips, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.