coder-academy-notes

A collection of notes from my time at Coder Academy

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April 16th

Covering:

Authentication using Devise

Website requires:

  • login/logout/sign up
  • users table
  • email
  • password (secure - hashed/salted)
  • When dealing with passwords use Devise gem:
    • Database Authenticatable: hashes and stores a password in the database to validate the authenticity of a user while signing in. The authentication can be done both through POST requests or HTTP Basic Authentication.
    • Omniauthable: adds OmniAuth support.
    • Confirmable: sends emails with confirmation instructions and verifies whether an account is already confirmed during sign in.
    • Recoverable: resets the user password and sends reset instructions.
    • Registerable: handles signing up users through a registration process, also allowing them to edit and destroy their account.
    • Rememberable: manages generating and clearing a token for remembering the user from a saved cookie.
    • Trackable: tracks sign in count, timestamps and IP address.
    • Timeoutable: expires sessions that have not been active in a specified period of time.
    • Validatable: provides validations of email and password. It’s optional and can be customized, so you’re able to define your own validations.
    • Lockable: locks an account after a specified number of failed sign-in attempts. Can unlock via email or after a specified time period.
  • Devise wiki how-to
  • Keep profile details (name, address, contact etc) in a separate table to the user account table
  • Usernames aren’t necessary, just make user log in with email address (unless social media, then offer username)

Creating an Instagram Clone

Steps wrapped in () are for installing Bootstrap in the process.

  • rails new instarails
  • gem 'devise' to gemfile and gem 'rspec-rails', '~> 3.7' to :development and :test group
  • (add gem 'bootstrap', '~> 4.1.0' and gem 'jquery-rails' to Gemfile if adding Bootstrap)
  • bundle install
  • (@import "bootstrap"; in application.css and rename to .scss, remove all *= require from file)
  • (add //= require jquery3, //= require popper and //= require bootstrap-sprockets to application.js file)
  • rails g rspec:install installs rspec
  • rails g devise:install installs devise
  • In config/environments/development.rb add config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { host: 'localhost', port: 3000 }
  • Make sure the root is defined
  • add <p class="notice"><%= notice %></p> and <p class="alert"><%= alert %></p> to app/views/layouts/application.html.erb
  • rails g devise User creates the User model, migration file and routes using devise
  • edit devise migration file to include modules required if necessary
  • rails db:migrate
  • tests for User model located in spec > models > user_spec.rb
  • rails g controller Home index to create index
  • before_action :authenticate_user!, except: [:index] in applicaton_controller.rb to ensure that user needs to log in to be able to access any section of the website
  • Navbar with login/signup and logout buttons in application view
  • rails g scaffold Media image_data:text description:text user:references
  • rails db:migrate to migrate new table
  • Remove user_id from permitted params in media_controller.rb
  • Remove user_id field from _form.html.erb in views > media
  • image_tag helper will convert url to img
  • partials folder inside views folder, files begin with _filename.html.erb, loaded in to page with <%= render 'partials/filename' %>