Rails 4 - My current_user logic is not working properly - Michael Hartl Rails 4.0 Tutorial

Question

I am rewriting one of my Rails applications in Rails 4 using Ruby 2. My original one used the 3.2 version of Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails Tutorial. I am copying the 3.2 version of my application to my new Rails 4 version. It appears that current_user is not being set properly. Every route using current_user aborts with a missing id and locale even though the record is accessed properly and a User is logged in and the locale is set. On my landing page which does not include routes using current_user I can change the locale and the correct text and images display for the selected locale. Unfortunately the header partial for the main site includes an edit_user_path(current_user) reference which means I cannot display any pages on my website except the landing page and another section of the website not related to a user.

Here is an example when I am trying to display the show action. I get similar errors anytime I attempt to access a route which references current_user.

No route matches {:controller=>"users", :action=>"show", :locale=>#<User id: 3, first_name: "first_name", last_name: "last_name", username: "username", email: "myemail@company.com", password_digest: "$2a$10$y73jlk0hQYKLClmXQI5iHe/fqXO66hJD3muWjDg5ziCD...", city: "MyCity", state_id: 3521, country_id: 233, remember_token: "8cce0e523a879e179dd5b23df04acc8d1cf3108e", password_reset_token: "nU1FbWD2nuXx23jnOmOkAQ", password_reset_sent_at: "2013-10-20 22:36:44", bio: "Here is my bio info...", active_user: "3", age_group: "3", gender: "F", admin: true, visible: true, created_at: "2012-08-28 19:43:27", updated_at: "2013-10-21 22:36:43", state_province: "MyState", broadcaster: true, language_id: 1, admin_localize: false, sos_student: false, send_newsletter: false, special_newsletter: true, temp_broadcaster: false, media_creator_id: 46, bad_email: false, banned: false, notify_resp_me: true, saved_micropost_id: 1, saved_topic_id: 56, saved_discussion_id: 1, notify_reply_me: true, on_profile_page: false, notify_new_disc: true>, :id=>nil, :format=>nil} missing required keys: [:locale, :id]  

It appears that current_user is nil. I think my remember_token logic may be the culprit. I have looked at sessions_helper.rb for the past few hours but cannot figure out what I have done wrong.

Here is my sessions_helper.rb code. Note: In my login(user) method I allow a User to decide if they want to permanently save their cookie or just use it for their session. The tutorial does a permanent cookie where the person has to log out for the cookie to be deleted.

  def current_user
    remember_token = User.encrypt(cookies[:remember_token])
    @current_user ||= User.find_by(remember_token: remember_token)
  end

  def current_user?(user)
    user == current_user
  end

  def login(user)
    remember_token = User.new_token
    if params[:remember_me]
      cookies.permanent[:remember_token] = remember_token
    else  
      cookies[:remember_token] = remember_token
    end  
    user.update_attribute(:remember_token, User.encrypt(remember_token))
    self.current_user = user
  end

  def logged_in?
    !current_user.nil?
  end

  def logged_in_user
    unless logged_in?
      store_location
      redirect_to login_path, notice: "#{t :must_login}"
    end
  end

  def logout
    self.current_user = nil
    cookies.delete(:remember_token)
    flash[:success] = "#{t :logout}"
  end

  def current_user=(user)
    @current_user = user
  end

  def redirect_back_or(default)
    redirect_to(session[:return_to] || default)
    session.delete(:return_to)
  end

  def store_location
    session[:return_to] = request.url if request.get?
  end

Here is my sessions_controller.rb logic. Note: I allow people to log in using an email address or a username. The logic is based on the Tutorial. However I display another path instead of redirecting to @user. That difference does not change the end results.

  def create
    user = User.find_by_email(params[:session][:email_user])
    if user && user.authenticate(params[:session][:password])
      if user.active_user == "1"
        flash[:error] = "#{t :flash_sessions_error1}"
      else
        flash[:success] = "#{t :flash_sessions_success}"   
        login user
      end  
      redirect_back_or home_path
    else
      user = User.find_by_username(params[:session][:email_user])
      if user && user.authenticate(params[:session][:password])
        if user.active_user == "1"
          flash[:error] = "#{t :flash_sessions_error1}"
        else   
          flash[:success] = "#{t :flash_sessions_success}"
          login user
        end  
        redirect_back_or home_path
      else
        flash.now[:error] = "#{t :flash_sessions_error2}"
        render "new"
      end
    end
  end

Here is my code in user.rb.

  before_create :create_remember_token

  def User.encrypt(token)
    Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(token.to_s)
  end

  def User.new_token
    SecureRandom.urlsafe_base64
  end

  private

    def create_remember_token
      self.remember_token = User.encrypt(User.new_token)
    end

Here is my show action in users_controller.rb.

  def show
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    @microposts = @user.microposts.order("created_at DESC").first(20)
    @discussions = @user.discussions.order("created_at DESC").first(20)
  end

Here is my rake routes output for all routes for users:

following_user GET    /:locale/users/:id/following(.:format)                users#following {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
followers_user GET    /:locale/users/:id/followers(.:format)                users#followers {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
         users GET    /:locale/users(.:format)                              users#index {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
               POST   /:locale/users(.:format)                              users#create {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
      new_user GET    /:locale/users/new(.:format)                          users#new {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
     edit_user GET    /:locale/users/:id/edit(.:format)                     users#edit {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
          user GET    /:locale/users/:id(.:format)                          users#show {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
               PATCH  /:locale/users/:id(.:format)                          users#update {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
               PUT    /:locale/users/:id(.:format)                          users#update {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}
               DELETE /:locale/users/:id(.:format)                          users#destroy {:locale=>/en|es|fr|pt/}

I will keep looking at this but for now I'm not seeing what I am doing wrong.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I took another look at my log this morning. I confirmed again that the logic was getting the correct record. I thought that current_user was not set properly because the end of the error said that both the id and locale were missing. Since the correct record was in the log I decided to add locale: I18n.locale.to_s to one of my paths like this.

edit_user_path(current_user, locale: I18n.locale.to_s)

After adding the locale to by routes the logic worked. Another thing was related to a default for default_url_options that worked in Rails 3 that does not work in Rails 4.

Rails.application.routes.default_url_options[:locale]= I18n.locale 

The I18n code worked as I had it coded in Rails 3. I found that with the links where I did not add the locale clause also worked. Hope this will help other people.