Ruby Webrick Http Authentication

Ruby Webrick HTTP Authentication

Seems to work OK for me if you do it in pretty much the same style e.g.

class Configuration < HTTPServlet::AbstractServlet
    def do_GET(req, res)
        HTTPAuth.basic_auth(req, res, "My Realm") {|user, pass|
          # block should return true if
          # authentication token is valid
          user == 'user' && pass == 'topsecret'
        }
        res.body = 
          "Authenticated OK\n"
    end
end

What is the problem you're having?

Rails running on WEBrick with HTTP authentication

Rails has a built in method for adding http basic authentication.

You should also look at something like Authlogic for authentication and user session management.

How to set the default error pages for a basic Webrick server?

Looking at the source code, it looks like httpresponse.rb has a "hook" called create_error_page:

  if respond_to?(:create_error_page)
    create_error_page()
    return
  end

So, if you add your own Ruby method called create_error_page in WEBrick::HTTPResponse, you can set your own markup:

module WEBrick
  class HTTPResponse
    def create_error_page
      @body = ''
      @body << <<-_end_of_html_
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>#{HTMLUtils::escape(@reason_phrase)}</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY>
    <H1>#{HTMLUtils::escape(@reason_phrase)}</H1>
    <HR>
    <P>Custom error page!</P>
  </BODY>
</HTML>
      _end_of_html_
    end
  end
end

Note that you have access to variables like @reason_phrase and ex.code. In your case, you can use ex.code (eg: 401) to set different content if you wish.

Here is a full example that you can run in an irb console that displays a custom error page (note that it assumes you have a directory called Public in your file system):

require 'webrick'

module WEBrick
  class HTTPResponse
    def create_error_page
      @body = ''
      @body << <<-_end_of_html_
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN">
<HTML>
  <HEAD><TITLE>#{HTMLUtils::escape(@reason_phrase)}</TITLE></HEAD>
  <BODY>
    <H1>#{HTMLUtils::escape(@reason_phrase)}</H1>
    <HR>
    <P>Custom error page!</P>
  </BODY>
</HTML>
      _end_of_html_
    end
  end
end

root = File.expand_path '~/Public'
server = WEBrick::HTTPServer.new :Port => 8000, :DocumentRoot => root
trap 'INT' do server.shutdown end
server.start

When you go to http://localhost:8000/bogus (a page that does not exist), you should see the custom error page, like so:

Sample Image

Hope it helps! :-]

Mimic .htaccess or some other type of password protecting with webrick

You can restrict access by using Rack based basic auth or IP white listing

Basic Auth

Add the following to your config/environments/development.rb

config.middleware.use Rack::Auth::Basic, "Beta Access" do |username, password|
  'secret' == password
end

IP White Listing

I found two gems for this purpose:

rack-auth-ip

rack-ip-whitelist

I would use rack-auth-ip as it has been there for some time. Add the following to your config/environments/development.rb

config.middleware.use Rack::Auth::IP, %w( YourIPAddress )

Now, the instance is accessible only if the originating IP is in the white list.

Ruby Webrick server not able to verify client certificate

This issue was fixed by providing the cacert file as :SSLCACertificateFile in server options instead of :SSLClientCA.

server_options = {
    :Host => '0.0.0.0',
    :Port => 443,
    :SSLEnable => true,
    :SSLVerifyClient    => OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_FAIL_IF_NO_PEER_CERT | OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER,
    :SSLVerifyDepth => 4,
    :SSLCertificate => OpenSSL::X509::Certificate.new(File.open('/Users/cert.pem').read),
    :SSLPrivateKey => OpenSSL::PKey::RSA.new(File.open('/Users/key.pem').read),
    :SSLCACertificateFile => '/Users/cai.cer'
}

How can Webrick based (Non RoR, Sinatra) web application can be severed using Apache and Passenger?

If you want your application WITH Webrick served by Apache you don't need Passenger
use mod_proxy in Apache with ProxyPass* primitives

If you want Apache + Passenger you have to change Webrick against Rack or Passenger compatible, Merb, Rails, etc...

Access WEBrick server from outside

Have you set up port forwarding on your router? What is the make and model of your router?

See there answers for more help:

Setting up the Webrick to serve to internet my rails app
cant do port forwarding ro my webrick server to access it from the net!

Ruby Webrick Http Authentication