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# Authentication

# Customize the current_user method

By default, Avo will not assume your authentication provider (the current_user method returns nil). That means Avo won't be able to retrieve the current user. You have to tell it how to get it.

# Using devise

For devise (opens new window), you should set it to current_user.

# config/initializers/avo.rb
Avo.configure do |config|
  config.current_user_method = :current_user
end

# Use a different authenticator

If you're using some other authentication provider, you may customize the current_user method to something else.

# config/initializers/avo.rb
Avo.configure do |config|
  config.current_user_method = :current_admin
end

If you get the current user from some other object like Current.user, you may pass a block to the current_user_method key.

# config/initializers/avo.rb
Avo.configure do |config|
  config.current_user_method do
    Current.user
  end
end

# Filter out requests

You probably do not want to allow Avo access to everybody. If you're using devise (opens new window) in your app, use this block to filter out requests to it in your routes.rb file.

authenticate :user do
  mount Avo::Engine => '/avo'
end

You may also add custom user validation such as user.admin? to only permit a subset of users to your Avo instance.

authenticate :user, -> user { user.admin? } do
  mount Avo::Engine => '/avo'
end

Check out more examples of authentication on sidekiq's authentication section (opens new window).

# authenticate_with method

Alternatively you can user the authenticate_with config attribute. It takes a block and evaluates it in Avo's ApplicationController as a before_action.

# config/initializers/avo.rb
Avo.configure do |config|
  config.authenticate_with do
    authenticate_admin_user
  end
end

Note that Avo's ApplicationController does not inherit from your app's ApplicationController, so any protected methods you defined there would not work, and you would need to write out the authentication logic explicitly in the block. For example, if you store your user_id in the session hash, then you can do:

# config/initializers/avo.rb
Avo.configure do |config|
  config.authenticate_with do
    redirect_to '/' unless session[:user_id] == 1 # hard code user ids here
  end
end

# Authorization

When you share access to Avo with your clients or large teams, you may want to restrict access to a resource or a subset of resources. To do that, you should set up your authorization rules (policies). Check out the authorization page for details on how to set that up.

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