How To: Add :confirmable to Users

The following instructions demonstrate how to enable :confirmable in a new or existing application.

Keep in mind that for existing applications with an established user base, active users must be marked as confirmed or they will be unable to log in following activation of the :confirmable module.

Confirming existing users is addressed in the migration portion below.

Modifying the User Model

First, add devise :confirmable to your models/user.rb file

devise :registerable, :confirmable

Create a New Migration

Then, do the migration as:

rails g migration add_confirmable_to_devise

This will generate db/migrate/YYYYMMDDxxx_add_confirmable_to_devise.rb. Add the following to it in order to do the migration.

class AddConfirmableToDevise < ActiveRecord::Migration
  # Note: You can't use change, as User.update_all will fail in the down migration
  def up
    add_column :users, :confirmation_token, :string
    add_column :users, :confirmed_at, :datetime
    add_column :users, :confirmation_sent_at, :datetime
    # add_column :users, :unconfirmed_email, :string # Only if using reconfirmable
    add_index :users, :confirmation_token, unique: true
    # User.reset_column_information # Need for some types of updates, but not for update_all.
    # To avoid a short time window between running the migration and updating all existing
    # users as confirmed, do the following
    User.update_all confirmed_at: DateTime.now
    # All existing user accounts should be able to log in after this.
  end

  def down
    remove_index :users, :confirmation_token
    remove_columns :users, :confirmation_token, :confirmed_at, :confirmation_sent_at
    # remove_columns :users, :unconfirmed_email # Only if using reconfirmable
  end
end

You can also generate the corresponding Devise views if they have not yet been created:

rails generate devise:views users

Do the migration rake db:migrate

Restart the server.

If you are not using :reconfirmable (i.e leave the commented out lines as they are in the change method described above), update the configuration in config/initializers/devise.rb

config.reconfirmable = false

Before you can actually send the confirmation mail, you need the Devise::Mailer or a custom mailer configured.

Redirecting user

If you want to redirect the user to a specific url after they clicked the link in the confirmation email, override the after_confirmation_path_for in your confirmations_controller:

Create a new confirmations_controller.rb in app/controllers directory:

class ConfirmationsController < Devise::ConfirmationsController
  private
  def after_confirmation_path_for(resource_name, resource)
    sign_in(resource) # In case you want to sign in the user
    your_new_after_confirmation_path
  end
end

In config/routes.rb, add this line so that Devise will use your custom ConfirmationsController. This assumes Devise operates on users table (you may edit to match yours).

devise_for :users, controllers: { confirmations: 'confirmations' } Restart the web server, and you should have it.

Allowing Unconfirmed Access

If you want to add a "grace period" where unconfirmed users may still login, use the allow_unconfirmed_access_for config option (which defaults to 0):

# in Devise Initializer
config.allow_unconfirmed_access_for = 365.days

Alternatively, you may want to skip required confirmation all-together:

# in User.rb
protected
def confirmation_required?
  false
end

Sending confirmation emails to all existing users

If you want to allow users to log in, but not register as confirmed?, do the following:

• enable reconfirmable by creating unconfirmed_email column in previous user migration
• set config.allow_unconfirmed_access_for to a valid time period

Now, all users will be able to log in and you may send them a confirmation instruction with:

User.find_each { |user| user.send_confirmation_instructions }

Forcing email update when using :reconfirmable

With :reconfirmable, all email updates will require confirmation. If you need to update the email attribute without sending confirmation email, use the skip_reconfirmation! method.

user = User.first
user.email = 'admin@app.com'
user.skip_reconfirmation!
user.save!