Troubleshooting Devise Redirects with Multiple Models and Turbolinks

Using two Devise Models

I pretty much always default to using Devise for my Ruby on Rails authentication.

For my current side project built in Rails 6, I've got two authenticating models: Author and Reader. It makes sense for me to keep these two models entirely separate. It's made my life a lot easier, in general. Using multiple models is supported out of the box with Devise, with some custom configuration.

Preventing Cross-model Visits with Devise

Devise provides a sample solution to prevent a logged in Author from concurrently logging in as a Reader, and vice-versa.

I modified the sample code a little bit when I first implemented this. I didn't have anywhere to send them since I built it out early in the development process, so I had each model redirect_to the root_path. This laid the groundwork for two days of troubleshooting down the road.

My custom Accessible module was initially written like this:

# ../controllers/concerns/accessible.rb
module Accessible
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  included do
    before_action :check_user
  end

  protected
  def check_user
    if current_admin
      flash.clear
      # if you have rails_admin. You can redirect anywhere really
      redirect_to(root_path) and return
    elsif current_user
      flash.clear
      # The authenticated root path can be defined in your routes.rb in: devise_scope :user do...
      redirect_to(root_path) and return
    end
  end
end

The Turbolinks Red Herring

As time went on, I built out most of the functionality of the application. I got the MVP working, built out some seed data, and deployed to a staging environment. I did some manual testing and played around with everything, and noticed that whenever I logged in as a sample Author or Reader, I got redirected to the home page. I assumed I had misconfigured something, so I followed this wiki article to redirect users back to their last visited page.

The wiki article provides two different implementations. I tried both and couldn't get it to work for the life of me. I dug in to the helper methods, hard coded returns, ran byebug sessions, and couldn't quite figure out waht wasn't working.

But I noticed that both of the methods provided by Devise checked if the request was an XHR. I thought I had identified the bug: I was using turbolinks out of the box with Rails 6. I don't know precisely what Turbolinks is doing under the hood, but my understanding is that it uses client-side requests to pre-render pages from the same origin, providing an SPA-like experience.

I figured Turbolinks navigation was breaking the expected Devise behavior. I found semi-recent blog posts about this phenomenon. I saw a few issues across the Turbolinks and Devise repositiories. I figured I was on to something.

Building a Reduced Test Case

So after I latched on to this idea, I decided I would write a blog post about it. To demonstrate the problem, I spun up a sample Rails app with Turbolinks and Devise. I duplicated my issue. As I went to turn off Turbolinks and demonstrate the root cause, I found this snippet in config/initializers/devise.rb:

# ==> Turbolinks configuration
# If your app is using Turbolinks, Turbolinks::Controller needs to be included to make redirection work correctly:
#
#  ActiveSupport.on_load(:devise_failure_app) do
#    include Turbolinks::Controller
#  end

So I un-commented the piece of configuration, but no luck. There was still a problem.

Removing the current_user Check

In the first StoreLocation example, I noticed that store_location_for(:user, request.fullpath) was only being triggered if current_user.present? returned true.

But that doesn't track for me. I want to store the location for a User (or Author, or Reader, or whomever) before they log in. So I removed that check. In my sample app, with just one User Devise model, and with Turbolinks::Controller turned on, I implemented the following:

# This example assumes that you have setup devise to authenticate a class named User.
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :store_user_location!, if: :storable_location?
  # The callback which stores the current location must be added before you authenticate the user 
  # as `authenticate_user!` (or whatever your resource is) will halt the filter chain and redirect 
  # before the location can be stored.
  before_action :authenticate_user!

  private
    # Its important that the location is NOT stored if:
    # - The request method is not GET (non idempotent)
    # - The request is handled by a Devise controller such as Devise::SessionsController as that could cause an 
    #    infinite redirect loop.
    # - The request is an Ajax request as this can lead to very unexpected behaviour.
    def storable_location?
      request.get? && is_navigational_format? && !devise_controller? && !request.xhr? 
    end

    def store_user_location!
      # :user is the scope we are authenticating
      store_location_for(:user, request.fullpath)
    end
end

And it worked! I figured I had solved my problem. All I needed to do to make it work in my actual application was:

1. Turn on Turbolinks::Controller
2. Implement the first store_user_location! method
3. Remove checks for current_author and current_reader
4. ???
5. Profit!

Hubris. Pure Hubris.

I made those changes to my application. No luck. I tried the second implementation of store_user_locaiton!... no luck. I turned Turbolinks on and off again. No luck. I yelled a little bit into a pillow. No luck, but it felt good.

I started digging into the differences between the sample application and my real application. I figured the biggest difference was using one Devise model vs. using many. So I started looking at the generated controllers and views for my multiple Devise models. I wrote some experimental code, tried to override after_sign_in_path_for from Devise, and still no luck.

But, if you'll recall, I was preventing cross-model visits with my Accessible module. For laughs, I turned off the module. Things started working.

The Real Culprit: Hardcoded Redirects

Remember how I told my Accessible module to redirect_to(root_path) and return in check_user? Yeah - me neither. I forgot I had written that method long ago before the application had taken shape. Forgot that I was hardcoding a redirect to the root path.

So I tapped into the stored_location_for method from Devise. I rewrote the Accessible module to look like:

module Accessible
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  included do
    before_action :check_user
  end

  protected

  def check_user
    if current_author
      flash.clear
      redirect_to(stored_location_for(:author)) and return
    elsif current_reader
      flash.clear
      redirect_to(stored_location_for(:reader)) and return
    end
  end
end

And everything started working. Now:

• Authors can't log in as Readers without signing out first
• Readers can't log in as Authors without signing out first
• When a person signs in to either an Author or a Reader account, they will then be redirected to the last page they were viewing before signing in
• Turbolinks are still working.

Comments

[Lee Smith 🍻]

Great writeup. I commend you for not being one of the people that this tweet is targeting. I'm totally guilty of disabling turbolinks on new projects simply because I've always disabled turbolinks. I think I'm going to revisit some old side projects and re-enable turbolinks and see what kind of trouble I can get into.

[Tyler Scott Williams]

Thanks for reading! Just tryna do my best and keep it conventional, hah.