How does authenticate_user! work?

Question

I am having trouble getting sign ins to work with devise.

So... this is what is getting posted to my sign in action:

Started POST "/sign_in" for 127.0.0.1 at 2011-12-30 17:53:14 +0800
  Processing by UsersController#sign_in as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"k/z12JAUDjFaLtw6X+dL5xa7ZtcLKYmxGSc6SAvaFlE=", "user"=>{"email"=>"fivetwentysix@gmail.com", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "remember_me"=>"0"}, "x"=>"0", "y"=>"0"}
Completed 401 Unauthorized in 0ms
  Processing by UsersController#new as HTML
  Parameters: {"utf8"=>"✓", "authenticity_token"=>"k/z12JAUDjFaLtw6X+dL5xa7ZtcLKYmxGSc6SAvaFlE=", "user"=>{"email"=>"fivetwentysix@gmail.com", "password"=>"[FILTERED]", "remember_me"=>"0"}, "x"=>"0", "y"=>"0"}
Rendered users/new.html.haml within layouts/application (31.7ms)
Completed 200 OK in 40ms (Views: 38.8ms | ActiveRecord: 0.9ms)

Here's what I've tried but doesn't work...

 def sign_in
   authenticate_user!
   if signed_in?
     redirect_to root_path
   else
     redirect_to sign_in_path
   end
 end

So I think I'm missing an understanding of how all this "magic" from devise is suppose to work. Things seem a bit too abstract that I feel isolated from the business logic behind devise, which leaves me lost because I'm unsure on how to tell authenticate_user! to read from my parameters.

So my instinct tells me to look up authenticate_user!

But where is that defined?

I had a brief look in the documentation of devise but could not find that method defined there.

Answer 1

If you want to use your own redirects after login/logout or edit profile (if I have understood what you meant), I suggest using this kind of method :

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  private

  def after_sign_out_path_for(resource_or_scope)
    root_path
  end

  def after_sign_in_path_for(resource_or_scope)
    root_path
  end

  def after_update_path_for(resource_or_scope)
    root_path
  end
end