Feeling like I want to cheat : Plugins versus coding

I've been working on a signup / login system. Things seem to be working alright with it. However I earlier setup acts_as_authenticated as a test app and looked at restful_authenticate. They seem pretty robust, and might relieve some of the work for me. I'm just not sure which direction to go in , a. my own code b. plugins with some customization.

Any opinions ?

Stuart

Dark Ambient wrote:

I've been working on a signup / login system. Things seem to be working alright with it. However I earlier setup acts_as_authenticated as a test app and looked at restful_authenticate. They seem pretty robust, and might relieve some of the work for me. I'm just not sure which direction to go in , a. my own code b. plugins with some customization.

Any opinions ?

Stuart

I use the code from Agile Web Dev book for my login system. It works for me, so I keep reusing it. I haven't tried any other methods for logins though. I like it more than using a plugin because I haven't learned how to edit plugins yet, but it's easy to edit the code for the Login model from the agile code so I can change the login process for each of my projects.

-Ben Lisbakken

I suppose it depends what you want out of it. I’m using acts_as_authenticated in a project I’m working on at the moment. Because of the timescale given for this project, I need to “cut corners” as much as possible and so using someone elses code for an authentication system will save me lots of time. It is a great plug-in and there’s no reason you can’t look at the code and see how it works. If you want to learn and have time on your hands, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t develop your own authentication system.

Alastair

I’ve never messed with acts_as_authenticated, so I can’t really compare, but the login_engine plugin is the most comprehensive login system I’ve seen for Rails, complete with password encryption and email password reminders.

Jason