Basic authentication with Rails Admin without Devise

RailsAdmin is a very nice simple gem that allows you to manage data in models via a simple to use GUI. By default, it comes without any authentication enabled, so anyone can access the /admin URL. It does allow you to integrate with popular authentication frameworks, though, like devise and CanCan, however, I find it to be an overkill in small simple projects. In case of the latter, I simply opt in for basic authentication over HTTPS.

Here is what needs to be done to enable basic authentication for RailsAdmin:

Step 1. Add user and password you wish to protect access with:

# in config/secrets.yml
development:
  ... ... ...
  user: radmin
  password: [my_dev_password]
production:
  ... ... ...
  user: radmin
  password: [myProdPassword]

Step 2. Add these lines to RA initializer:

# in config/initializers/reails_admin.rb
  config.authorize_with do
    authenticate_or_request_with_http_basic('Login required') do |username, password|
      username == Rails.application.secrets.user &&
      password == Rails.application.secrets.password
    end
  end

Step 3. Restart

Now, restart your rails app server and try to access the RailsAdmin URL (e.g. /admin). It should prompt for a user name and password.

Today my environment was:

• Rails 4.1.0.rc2
• Rails Admin 0.6.1