How to turn your rails site into an OAuth Provider

Hi Pelle,

Very happy the Ruby/Rails side of things are finally progressing!

Unfortunately, for the routes, the only support for generators seem to only generate restful routes . You will need to copy-paste the function and customize locally.

how is OAuth different than OpenID?

Choonkeat,
I feared as much. Maybe I’ll do a patch to rails. I’ve already got a patch through in that area.

Sergiu,

OpenID and OAuth er complimentary technologies that server 2 very different purposes.

OpenID is used for users to identify themselves and login interactively to various web services. So Browser to Server.

OAuth is used by a user to give Server A permissions to use the users data on Server B. So Delegated Server to Server.

I know it can be a bit confusing. It took me a while to completely understand it.

I’ve read a few examples about OAuth so now it’s much clear. It’s great having it as a Rails plugin, thanks for doing this.

May I ask what is the time frame on the consumer generator or tutorial?

Eagerly awaiting the Consumer post… :) Great gem btw.

I guess, I’ll have to write it then ;-)

If you want to get started have a look at the OAuth Gem RDoc, which apparently isn’t linked from the main site.

The only 3 classes you need to worry about are:

• OAuth::Consumer
• OAuth::RequestToken
• OAuth::AccessToken

The basic flow is that you configure an instance of OAuth::Consumer with the details the service provider (say Twitter or Agree2 gives you).

(Hint Agree2 actually generates a code snippet for you)

I digress…

<pre><code>consumer=OAuth::Consumer.new "key","secret",{:site=>"https://agree2.com"} @request_token=consumer.get_request_token
redirect_to request_token.authentication_url @access_token=request_token.getAccessToken

people=access_token.get(“/users.xml”)</code></pre>

The plan is to create a generator in the plugin that creates a controller and a set of models to manage this whole process with your users.

I am also in touch with Daniel who is working on integrating this into ActiveResource.

I am a Rails Noob, so please pardon me if I ask any obvious questions. With that said…after I perform the rake db:migrate towards the top of this ‘tutorial’, and I try to do the next step: “And your oauth provider is now up and running on http://localhost:3000/oauth to start registering a client application.”, I am getting an “undefined method ‘login_required’ for #OauthController….”

Am I missing something? Any ideas to help me along would be much appreciated!

It sounds like you’re missing one of the authentication plugins above.

My recommendation is restful_authentication

HI Pelle,

Another newbie. Getting the same error as Corey. I have the restful_authentication plugin installed/ Do I need to run “./script/generate authenticated …” before I run your generator?

Dave,
Yes you’re right you need to fully install the plugin and generate it’s code first.

Pelle

your oauth provider is now up and running on http://localhost:3000/oauth to start registering a client application.”, I am getting an "undefined local variable or method `current_user’ for #<OauthController:0×4839b8c>
" error.

altough i am getting the registration screen for the url http://localhost:3000/oauth/new. but getting the same error on hitting the create button.

how are we going to initialize current_user. do we need to make the authentication module of our own?

Santosh,
You need to fully install one of the authentication plugins first as mentioned above.

i installed the restful_authentication pluggin, and folled the steps stated by you. now on firing the url http://localhost:3000/oauth, i am getting this error “undefined method `login_required’ for #<OauthController:0×487d7d8>”

Great resource, I added it to the Netflix Resource center at http://netflixapi.com

Hi,

I am new to this and getting below errro after follow up with all the stpes mentioned above, but still tillte bit doubt for :

You also need to add a few associations to your user object:

has_many :client_applications
has_many :tokens, :class_name=>“OauthToken”,:order=>“authorized_at desc”,:include=>[:client_application]
****************************

In which file I need to add these lines.

Getting below error when browsing:
**********************

NoMethodError in OauthController#login
undefined method `login_required’ for #<OauthController:0×47f552c>

Please help me out

I think the link for starting registering client applications should be (instead of /oauth):
http://localhost:3000/oauth_clients

To do this I added the corresponding route:
map.resources :oauth_clients

If using restful-authentication plugin, after adding ‘include AuthenticatedSystem’ to the application.rb did the missing errors and variables stopped.

I agree with @masone, http://localhost:3000/oauth_clients presents a working page, rather than using /oauth url. Still trying to figure out that last part.

Has anyone tried 2-legged OAuth?

If so can you please let me know if it generates the signatures properly?
i’ve been trying to get the 2-legged OAuth working, but the client and provider generates different signatures.

i tried with other clients as well… still no help yet.

@ clients end
?oauth_nonce=WrGjXcZheoXklMxLCrxWewLmYW2d0HSRj0rsj8CPy4&oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1&oauth_timestamp=1247127971&oauth_consumer_key=gDQ2c0OqwtKt51tyV2ANzA&oauth_version=1.0&oauth_signature=Qw65z5ueVxp8QnRyoU4bmxZnVTg%3D

@provider end
Signature is aYqi3i5XI3zEZALugNxo3F6W9Fw=

Exescue me, I am also new to this, because our web had already finished the login part, but not used plugins above, we wrote the must_login function instead of login_required, but i don’t know how to change oauth_required, can you tell me what should i do, or i just should install the plugin?

Hi, I’m trying to figure out if I can, as a consumer, let users authenticate with oauth without the need of local credentials:

signup:
my website -> oauth -> twitter -> get user profile

login:
my website -> oauth -> login on twitter = login on my website

Thanks in advance

Hello,

Great plugin. I jus wanted to know, is it possible to use this with AuthLogic Authentication in Rails ?

Although I have tried using it, I wanted to get rid of the approve app screen and wanted auto approve. Can I make it auto approve ?

Secondly, I tried integrating Authlogic with this plugin, but culdn`t :(

Regards

@Michael

I want it to be less painful to integrate with authlogic or clearance. As it turns out it’s not too bad.

You need to make sure the following 3 protected methods are implemented in application controller.:

logged_in?, current_user and authorize?

You may already have these, but as authlogic doesn’t have a generator you might not.

• logged_in? should return true if user is logged in.
• current_user should return the current user
• authorize? you can just have return true

If you’re still having problems try sending a message with the errors you are getting to the mailing list and I’m sure we’ll get you sorted out in no time.

@Pelle

Thanks for replying so soon. I would just like to let you know that I have managed to get it up and running with Authlogic :)

I have made my rails site as OAuth Provider and is working fine.

I have a PHP app which will be the consumer. I have managed to get it up and running as well i.e the API requests are working :)

Although, when I logout of my Rails site, I assume, the PHP app should automatically realize this and provide me with a request token once again, instead it still shows me as logged in and gives my access to the Rails site API. Is this a bug ? (I am using the OAuth library for PHP and it is working fine with Twitter, so I am assuming either there is something I am overlooking in my Rails app as OAuth Provider, since the PHP app is flawless)

Thanks Once again :)

Click to Continue Reading… link doesn’t work :( so I can read the whole post. Any help?

Click to Continue Reading works fine now, thanks. I’m seeing @pelle’s email address in the form now, though. Weird.

The Continue Reading link is broken again :(

I don’t even see a Continue Reading link and there shouldn’t be one. What browser are you using?

@Pelle

Is there a way to use the oauth-plugin in a Rails 2.2.2 application with the Engines plugin? I’m getting the following error when trying
to add a new OAuth Client (oauth_clients_controller.rb:16 @client_application.save):

NameError: uninitialized constant OAuth::Server

Note that this error just occurs in an Rails 2.2.2 application with the Engines plugin (tag 2.2.2).

Here is the setup do reproduce the error above:

Create a Rails 2.2.2 application from scratch:

rails _2.2.2_ provider
cd provider

Install the engines plugin with the tag 2.2.2:

script/plugin install --revision 'tag 2.2.2' git://github.com/lazyatom/engines.git

Add the following line to the top of config/environment.rb. You should add this line just below the require for Rails’ own boot.rbfile.

require File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), '../vendor/plugins/engines/boot')

Install the restful-authentication plugin:

script/plugin install git://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication.git

Rename the restful-authentication folder to avoid a NameErrorexception (lighthouse tracker ticket):

mv vendor/plugins/restful-authentication vendor/plugins/restful_authentication

Run the restful-authentication generator:

script/generate authenticated user sessions

Add the following in the gem dependency section of config/environment.rb:

config.gem "oauth", :version => '0.3.6'
config.gem "oauth-plugin", :version => '0.3.10'

Run the rake gem install command:

rake gems:install

Run the oauth generator:

script/generate oauth_provider

Add a few associations to your user object:

has_many :client_applications
has_many :tokens, :class_name=>"OauthToken",:order=>"authorized_at desc",:include=>[:client_application]

Run your migrations and open a console:

rake db:migrate
script/console

Now print the OAuth::Server:

p OAuth::Server

And you will see the following error:

NameError: uninitialized constant OAuth::Server
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:442:in `load_missing_constant'
        from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.2.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:77:in `const_missing'
        from (irb):1

Any tip?

B.

i’m also seeing a continue link using firefox 3.5.3 on ubuntu. the post seems to be cut off there with the last text being: “Easy before filter to provide oauth protection on your actions”

i’ll try another browser/OS and see what happens…

this post works fine with firefox 3.5.3 on windows. (not sure why it’s bugging out on ubuntu with 3.5.3)

The article is cut off right after the enumeration of Provider Features. The Continue Reading… link just points to this same page.

The article is cut off for me as well (tried several browsers, Mac and Win) and I suspect there is something in it that I need to know. I am having problems getting login_or_oauth_required filter to work. My app is throwing UnknownSignatureMethod exception and I cannot figure out what I’m missing.

Could you provide the full article? Thanks.

Anybody knows if it’s possible to make oauth work with devise as an authentication solution. I have to use http://github.com/plataformatec/devise/ since at this time this is the only authentication solution that works with mongo mapper. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Pelle,

The document gets cut off and there is a continue reading link below. Using FF 3.5.7 on Windows. Please help!

Cheers,
Aditya