- Use the session hash to log in a user
In this lab, we'll continue working on the blog site and set up a basic login feature.
There is some starter code in place for a Rails API backend and a React frontend. To get set up, run:
bundle install
rails db:migrate db:seed
npm install --prefix client
You can work on this lab by running the tests with learn test
. It will also be
helpful to see what's happening during the request/response cycle by running the
app in the browser. You can run the Rails server with:
rails s
And you can run React in another terminal with:
npm start --prefix client
You don't have to make any changes to the React code to get this lab working.
For our basic login feature, we'll need the following functionality:
- A user can log in by providing their username in a form
- A user can log out
- A user can remain logged in, even after refreshing the page
We'll need to create the routes and controller methods to handle each of these features. Let's get started!
-
Generate these routes:
POST /login
: run theSessionsController#create
methodDELETE /logout
: run theSessionsController#destroy
method
-
Create a sessions controller.
- Note: If you use the generators to generate your controllers, be sure to
pass the
--no-test-framework
flag to avoid generating unneeded files:rails g controller Sessions --no-test-framework
- Note: If you use the generators to generate your controllers, be sure to
pass the
-
Make a
SessionsController#create
method. It should:- Find a user in the database using the username from
params
- Save the user's ID to the session hash
- Return the user as a JSON object
- Find a user in the database using the username from
-
Make a
SessionsController#destroy
method. It should:- Remove the user ID from the session hash
- Return an empty response with a 204 No Content status code
-
Generate these routes:
GET /me
: run theUsersController#show
method
-
Create a users controller.
- Note: If you use the generators to generate your controllers, be sure to
pass the
--no-test-framework
flag to avoid generating unneeded files:rails g controller Users --no-test-framework
- Note: If you use the generators to generate your controllers, be sure to
pass the
-
Make a
UsersController#show
method. It should:- Find a user in the database using the user id from the session hash
- Return the user as a JSON object