# Advice on migrating to restful\_authentication

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-migrating-to-restful-authentication/133322>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 30, 2008, 5:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-migrating-to-restful-authentication/133322 "2008-03-30T05:29:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dino_d)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2008, 5:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-migrating-to-restful-authentication/133322/1 "2008-03-30T05:29:28Z")

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Hi -

I’ve spent a lot of time learning Rails, and building a User model,  
controller, etc. I’m just starting to add a “forgot password”  
function and I am reading that restful\_authentication looks like it  
has that built in. My question is, is it possible to migrate from  
what I have to restful\_authentication without creating a massive  
headache for myself, or is this relatively straightforward? All I  
want to do is add “forgot password” functionality, but it looks like  
this generator is exactly what I want.

The more general observation is, order seems to count a lot in ROR.  
If I were starting an app from scratch, I think this time around, I’d  
start with restful\_authentication along with a few others that are  
really really time saving. But it seems like if you go down a  
development path, unaware that someone has solved a lot of problems  
for you, and then discover that plugin or generator, it is sometimes  
more work than it’s worth to undo all of your work. Does anyone agree  
with this?

Thanks,  
Dino

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**Author:** ![dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dino_d)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2008, 5:41am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-migrating-to-restful-authentication/133322/2 "2008-03-30T05:41:12Z")

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On Mar 29, 2008, at 8:28 PM, dino d. wrote:

> But it seems like if you go down a  
> development path, unaware that someone has solved a lot of problems  
> for you, and then discover that plugin or generator, it is sometimes  
> more work than it’s worth to undo all of your work. Does anyone agree  
> with this?

Actually, no. I find most of my time is spent figuring out how I want  
my application to behave and making it so. Pulling out one  
implementation and replacing it with another is normally far less time  
consuming than the initial implementation of a particular behavior. I  
take it as a given that I will refactor and if some larger chunks of  
functionality can be replaced in-situ with a better alternative, then  
I generally will do that if there is a reason to touch that code. (If  
it ain’t broke, though, don’t fix it!)

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**Author:** ![dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@dino\_d](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/dino_d)\
**Post date:** [March 30, 2008, 8:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/advice-on-migrating-to-restful-authentication/133322/3 "2008-03-30T08:22:26Z")

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I have created an extended restful authenticator that includes forgot  
password. Check out the following site:

[Http://www.rubyplus.org](Http://www.rubyplus.org)  
Free Ruby & Rails screencasts