I recently had to develop a small application for a client. The goal was to add a feature to grown Java web application.

As the software was maintained for several years there are users with old an new MySql passwords in the system.

To authenticate the user I have chosen authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic

As I just needed handful of actions all of them go in one controller:

class MyController < ApplicationController

  before_filter :authenticate

  def index
   # [ ... ]
  end

  protected

  def authenticate
    authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic do |id, password|
      @user = User.find_by_name(id)
      login_ok = @user.authenticate(password)
      login_ok
    end
  end

end

To check if the user can be authenticated:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  def authenticate(password)
    user = User.find_by_sql(["select * from user where user_pass=password('%s') \
                              OR user_pass=old_password('%s')",password,password])
    (user.length > 0)?true:false
  end


end

Its a very simple approach.

What do you think?

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