How to authenticate the user with warden/devise in a customized way?-Collection of common programming errors

This is a Rails 3.0 app with Mongoid as ODM. Following is the user model in which the devise is installed.

class User
  include Mongoid::Document

  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable, :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable

  field :email
  field :username
  field :loginable_token

end

I’m building an API. So, for authentication I wanted to authenticate the users with :email and :password. From the GUI, its fine and working.

Now, I want to implement it via API, so I ve created a separate route /api_login.json that hits the login action with params {"username"=>"[email protected]", "password"=>"sachin", "action"=>"login", "controller"=>"api/v1/accounts", "format"=>"json"}

When I try to authenticate with the warden.authenticate!(:scope => :user) method before sign_in, it blows up with the following backtrace.

(rdb:1) l
[3, 12] in /Users/sts-151sts-151/Dev/cloudfactory/app/controllers/api/v1/accounts_controller.rb
  3      respond_with(@current_account)    
  4    end
  5    
  6    def login
  7      debugger
=> 8      resource = warden.authenticate!(:scope => :user)
  9       sign_in(:user, resource)
  10      if user == nil
  11        
  12        respond_with(User.account.apps.first)
(rdb:1) p params
{"username"=>"[email protected]", "password"=>"sachin", "action"=>"login", "controller"=>"api/v1/accounts", "format"=>"json"}
(rdb:1) rs = warden.authenticate!(:scope => :user)
*** Unknown command: "rs = warden.authenticate!(:scope => :user)".  Try "help".
(rdb:1) p rs = warden.authenticate!(:scope => :user)

 1) /api/v1/lines POST send back the default app
    Failure/Error: last_response.status.should eql(200)

expected 200
    got 401

(compared using eql?)

    # ./spec/api/v1/accounts_spec.rb:46:in `block (3 levels) in '

The test is via default rack-test way.

What is correct way to authenticate?

Originally posted 2013-11-09 21:10:28.