Action Policy VS authentication-zero

Action Policy is a flexible, extensible, and performant authorization framework for Ruby and Rails apps. It uses multiple caching strategies out of the box, making it very fast, especially if your authorization rules require database queries.

Action Policy is the latest Authorization framework I've seen recommended. What is more, it is maintained by the nice and experienced team from Evil Martians.

Lots of goodies here, such as token authentication, role- and permission-based authorization (including a move from Pundit to ActionPolicy), and how I test the API end-to-end using *raises flame shield* Cucumber.

Also, ActionPolicy is better than Pundit for most applications. Give it a try.

Use Action Policy or Pundit, and write tests for your policies. Authz is worth testing with near complete coverage.

You may ask what's makes Active Entry better or different from other gems like Pundit, Action Policy (especially), or CanCanCan.

At work, we've recently faced similar issues and moved to ActionPolicy as a result. It's designed slightly differently, but there is a lot of overlap with what John came up with.

Subsequently, we need a way to authenticate our users to associate prompts with them. Rather than using an incumbent like Devise, I chose to use a different approach. The authentication-zero gem can flexibly generate an authentication system, as opposed to including it as an engine. Conveniently, it comes with options such as:

If you don’t need a good amount of features that Devise brings to the table, I‘d skip it entirely. Look up has_secure_password, that will be enough for a vast amount of applications with authentication. Maybe combine with cancancan for authorization. Once you feel you have a grip on those, re-evaluate devise or take a look at https://github.com/lazaronixon/authentication-zero which will transparently integrate into your app instead of providing a Rube Goldberg machine (that’s what devise will feel like for beginners for a long time).

I keep going back and forth between Devise and something a little more friendly like authentication-zero gem for authentication.

For those that have used the authentication-zero gem or are familiar with its functionality, what is the best way to upgrade it in a project when new functionality is released?

True. I tend to stay away from gems that try to integrate into multiple parts of your app to provide some sort of comprehensive solution. The kinds of gems I recommend are: 1) libraries (you call into them when you need them) 2) mounted apps on a url, isolated from the rest of your app 3) generators (this one seems nice, the author mentioned it in another HN thread: https://github.com/lazaronixon/authentication-zero).

Check out https://github.com/lazaronixon/authentication-zero

I prefer to use authentication-zero, which generates code for me in the same application using has_secure_password, has good security practices, uses the same functions as Rails, and allows me to modify the flow to my liking.