Authentication using Google Accounts for your Rails App
The methodology is very simple.
- Redirect the user to grant access to your app for a particular Google service.
- Once access is granted, use the authentication token to retrieve information related to the user.
I demonstrate this with a very simple & idiotic Sinatra app which actually does nothing intelligent – apart from just outputting first 10 contacts from the user’s address book.
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require ‘rubygems’
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require ‘sinatra’
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require "gdata"
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client = GData::Client::Contacts.new
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get "/" do
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next_url = ‘http://127.0.0.1:4567/app’
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secure = false
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session = true
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authsub_link = client.authsub_url(next_url, secure, session, nil)
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redirect(authsub_link)
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end
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get ‘/app’ do
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pp request.env
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client.authsub_token = request.env["rack.request.query_hash"]["token"]
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client.authsub_token = client.auth_handler.upgrade()
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contacts = client.get("http://www.google.com/m8/feeds/contacts/default/full?max-results=5").to_xml
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puts contacts
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end
More information about using GData is available at http://code.google.com/apis/gdata/articles/gdata_on_rails.html
Example scenarios this can be used?
- Allowing people to login into your app with their existing google account.
- Accessing user data with user’s permission
- Signing up for your app using Google account information
Happy Hacking!
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