How to log in from console?

I am attempting to investigate the object state during a login process.
I need instruction in the correct technique to emulate filling out an
html form and submitting it within the rails console.

Given a login form at /user_session/new with fields :username and
:password and a submit button.

$ script/console

app.new_user_session_path
=> “/user_session/new”

@params = { :password => ‘mypassword’, :username => ‘myuser’ }
=> {:password=>“mypassword”, :username=>“myuser”}

Now, how do I submit this to the create action of the
user_sessions_controller?

It will be easier to debug your app to find out the internal behavior
of your objects.

Daniel

On Dec 16, 10:25 am, James B. [email protected]

Daniel wrote:

It will be easier to debug your app to find out the internal behavior
of your objects.

http://www.datanoise.com/ruby-debug

Daniel

Perhaps. But I would still like to know how to get this to work through
the console. I have found a few leads on the web, such as :
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/600. But, I am afraid that this
example does not make a lot of sense to me and appears at first blush to
be a bit overwrought.

I think that my main problem at this point is my lack of familiarity
with some basic Ruby syntax pertaining to hashes or how to construct an
http request with form data.

If I do this:

$ script/console

app.new_user_session_path
=> "/user_session/new

That seems correct. Next I need to fill in the form params which are
nested in a hash called user_session. This is where I believe that I am
going off the rails (pardon the pun). The user_session hash is accessed
in the create method of the user_sessions_controller thus:

@user_session = UserSession.new(params[:user_session])

:user_session contains three elements, :password, :username, and
:remember_me. So I tried this:

@params = { :user_session => { :password => ‘mypass’, :username => ‘myname’, :remember_me => ‘0’ } }
=> {:user_session=>{:remember_me=>“0”, :password=>“mypass”,
:username=>“myname”}}

Which also seem ok to me, given I believe that it is @params that I use
to pass the form data back. If I misapprehend that, admittedly a strong
possibility, then the failure that follows is expected.

Then I do this:

app.post app.user_session_path
==> 200

But, the response code only refers to the re-rendered input page which
has these errors:

app.response
=> …

2 errors prohibited this user session from being saved

There were problems with the following fields:

  • Username can not be blank
  • Password can not be blank
...

Evidently I am not getting the form data to the controller. So, if some
kind soul would care to demonstrate to me how this is accomplished
within the console then I will be most grateful.

Regards,

James B. wrote:

Evidently I am not getting the form data to the controller. So, if some
kind soul would care to demonstrate to me how this is accomplished
within the console then I will be most grateful.

I figured it out.

$ script/console

app.new_user_session_path
=> “/user_session/new”

@params = { :user_session => { :password => ‘mypass’, :username => ‘myname’, :remember_me => ‘0’ } }
=> {:user_session=>{:remember_me=>“0”, :password=>“mypass”,
:username=>“myname”}

app.post app.user_session_path @params
=> 200

Ta Daa… we’re in.

James B. wrote:

s/b

app.post app.user_session_path @params
=> 302

Got to watch where I am snipping from…

On Dec 16, 2008, at 11:43 AM, James B. wrote:

Perhaps. But I would still like to know how to get this to work
through
the console. I have found a few leads on the web, such as :
http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/600. But, I am afraid that this
example does not make a lot of sense to me and appears at first
blush to
be a bit overwrought.

I think you’d be better off creating a second way to log in where you
can simply pass normal parameters from the console.

Steven Budrys wrote:

I think you’d be better off creating a second way to log in where you
can simply pass normal parameters from the console.

However, that was my problem to begin with, not knowing how to pass
parameters from the console.

On Dec 16, 2008, at 12:21 PM, James B. wrote:

Steven Budrys wrote:

I think you’d be better off creating a second way to log in where you
can simply pass normal parameters from the console.

However, that was my problem to begin with, not knowing how to pass
parameters from the console.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant create a new method that
took parameters so that you could call it simply by something like

MyController.console_login(name, password)

James,

You can use Mechanize for this sort of things:

http://github.com/tenderlove/mechanize/tree/master

Cheers, Sazima

On Dec 16, 1:25 pm, James B. [email protected]