Clearance

Rails authentication for developers who write tests.

We have clearance, Clarence.

Wiki

Most information regarding Clearance is on the Github Wiki.

Integration with Suspenders

Clearance is based on the same conventions and tools as Suspenders If you use it, you already have some configuration mentioned below.

Gem installation (Rails 2.1+)

In config/environment.rb:

config.gem "thoughtbot-clearance", 
  :lib     => 'clearance', 
  :source  => 'https://gems.github.com', 
  :version => '>= 0.5.0'

In config/environments/test.rb:

config.gem 'thoughtbot-shoulda',
  :lib     => 'shoulda',
  :source  => "https://gems.github.com", 
  :version => '>= 2.9.1'
config.gem 'thoughtbot-factory_girl',
  :lib     => 'factory_girl',
  :source  => "https://gems.github.com", 
  :version => '>= 1.2.0'

Then:

rake gems:install
rake gems:unpack 
rake gems:install RAILS_ENV=test
rake gems:unpack  RAILS_ENV=test

The generator

Make sure the development database exists and run the generator:

script/generate clearance

A number of files will be created and instructions will be printed.

You may already have some of these files. Don’t worry. You’ll be asked if you want to overwrite them.

Features

If you are using Cucumber on your application Clearance comes with a feature generator:

script/generate clearance_features

All of the files generated should be new with the exception of the features/support/paths.rb file. If you have not modified your paths.rb then you will be okay to replace it with this one. If you need to keep your paths.rb file then you will need to add these locations in your paths.rb manually:

def path_to(page_name)
  case page_name
   ...
  when /the sign up page/i
   new_user_path
  when /the sign in page/i
   new_session_path 
  when /the password reset request page/i
   new_password_path
  ...
end

Authors

Clearance was extracted out of Hoptoad. We merged the authentication code from two of thoughtbot’s client’s Rails apps. The following people have made significant contributions, suggestions, and generally improved the library. Thank you!

Dan Croak, Mike Burns, Jason Morrison, Joe Ferris, Eugene Bolshakov, Josh Nichols, Mike Breen, Marcel Görner, Bence Nagy, Ben Mabey, Eloy Duran, Tim Pope, & Mihai Anca.