newbie question on usersession

rubyonrails-talk
#1

all:
prob a stupid question.. new to ruby/rails.

I have a working ruby on rails app on my server. However, i don't
provide authentication service. (login etc).. In my workplace, there
is a centrally authenticated URL- if ppl go there first, they can get
authenticated. i thought i will put my html start page in this
centrally authenticated place(with a form and hidden param and
redirect to my ruby on rails server).

I however, want to prevent ppl directly using http://myServer/app/main

So,
in my main method, i do this
def controller_main
   @user = @params['user']
   if (@user == nil)
       redirect_to "http://goway.com" # basically send them to some no
accesspl
   end
end

This looked good.. but the problem is: i have other methods like list
def list
  # This lists all my data
  #here my check for @user always returns nil. Why?
end

Only main method gets access to the html hidden param 'user'. i dont
know why storing it in @user does not work (i thought its instance
variable).

#2

Thanks for your reply. It still does not work for me.
It only works on access to my main page (since the html redirect is
passing a hidden param).
in the login server, my html page content is like this

#3

the way i solved is using session[:user] = @params[‘user’]

and in other methods i just use the value of session[:user]