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Rails-API-Template

This template creates a Ruby on Rails API application with the following features:

  • Standard JSON API server using JSON API Resources
  • Use UUID instead of integer IDs by default in migrations
  • Standard has_secure_password extension used for storing user passwords
  • Multiple roles available per user backed by Rolify
  • Authorization of REST actions backed by Pundit and JSON API Authorization
  • Use memcached as underlying cache store
  • Custom has_secure_tokens extension used in conjuction with JSON Web Tokens for managing and verifying user tokens
  • An authorization controller concern and a sessions_controller to handle JWT authentication and authorization
  • A registrations_controller to handle user registrations
  • A has_fulltext_search extension backed by PGSearch used to leverage PostgreSQL’s full text search
  • A production ready Puma configuration
  • Rspec and FactoryBot for testing
  • A template for Rollbar exception monitoring (should be used in production only)
  • A template for New Relic application monitoring

Included support for (TBD):

  • Excel
  • PDF
  • Background jobs & scheduling
  • Email
  • Networking tools
  • Reporting tools
  • ISO-compliant countries and exchange-rates information

Requirements

  • Ruby
  • PostgreSQL
  • Memcached

Usage

gem install \
    bundler \
    rails \
    foreman \
    --no-rdoc \
    --no-ri

rails new myapi \
    -m https://raw.github.com/matteolc/rails-api-template/master/template.rb \
    -d postgresql \
    --api

cd myapi
rspec
foreman start

Authentication

Authentication is performed using JSON Web Tokens. JSON Web Tokens are an open, industry standard RFC 7519 method for representing claims securely between two parties. When the user successfully logs in using their credentials, a JSON Web Token will be returned, which should be kept by clients in local storage (no cookies):

"token":"eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpYXQiOjE1MzYyMjU5NDUsImV4cCI6MTUzNjMxMjM0NSwic3ViIjoiMzdjMDY2ZjgtNDhjMS00NDZjLTk4OGQtYzQ0ZDQ4MDJiNzZmIiwicm9sZXMiOlsiYWRtaW4iXX0.UwqjX27pGJHJoGjCMkLhBnwoszb9d590upnkRFM0LaA"}

The above token decodes to:

{
  "alg": "HS256"
  "iat": 1536225945,
  "exp": 1536312345,
  "sub": "37c066f8-48c1-446c-988d-c44d4802b76f",
  "roles": [
    "admin"
  ]
}

Note Since there is no session information and every call to the REST API requires authentication, caching is used to improve performance and avoid excessive hits to the database. Upon login the user is cached with an expiration time of 5 minutes.

Whenever the user wants to access a protected route or resource, the user agent should send the JWT in the Authorization header using the Bearer schema:

Authorization: Bearer <token>

The following routes are available for authorization:

  • POST /api/v1/login?username=user&password=12345678
  • DELETE /api/v1/logout
  • POST /api/v1/[email protected]&username=user&password=12345678&password_confirmation=12345678

The JWT spec supports NONE, HMAC, RSASSA, ECDSA and RSASSA-PSS algorithms for cryptographic signing. Currently the JWT uses HMAC using SHA-256 algorithm. To generate an HMAC you need a signiging secret in an environment variable called JWT_SECRET.

JSON Web Token defines some reserved claim names and defines how they should be used. JWT supports these reserved claim names:

  • 'exp' (Expiration Time) Claim
  • 'iat' (Issued At) Claim
  • 'sub' (Subject) Claim
  • 'roles' (Roles) Claim

Expiration Time Claim

From Oauth JSON Web Token 4.1.4. "exp" (Expiration Time) Claim:

The exp (expiration time) claim identifies the expiration time on or after which the JWT MUST NOT be accepted for processing. The processing of the exp claim requires that the current date/time MUST be before the expiration date/time listed in the exp claim. Implementers MAY provide for some small leeway, usually no more than a few minutes, to account for clock skew. Its value MUST be a number containing a NumericDate value. Use of this claim is OPTIONAL.

The default expiry value is set to 1 day.

Issued At Claim

From Oauth JSON Web Token 4.1.6. "iat" (Issued At) Claim:

The iat (issued at) claim identifies the time at which the JWT was issued. This claim can be used to determine the age of the JWT. The leeway option is not taken into account when verifying this claim. The iat_leeway option was removed in version 2.2.0. Its value MUST be a number containing a NumericDate value. Use of this claim is OPTIONAL.

Subject Claim

From Oauth JSON Web Token 4.1.2. "sub" (Subject) Claim:

The sub (subject) claim identifies the principal that is the subject of the JWT. The Claims in a JWT are normally statements about the subject. The subject value MUST either be scoped to be locally unique in the context of the issuer or be globally unique. The processing of this claim is generally application specific. The sub value is a case-sensitive string containing a StringOrURI value. Use of this claim is OPTIONAL.

This claim contains the UUID of the user.

Roles Claim

This custom claim contains the (names of the) roles assigned to the user.

Other Custom Claims

You can add more custom claims if required by your client application. To do so, add your custom claims to the hash passed to the JsonWebToken.new.encode call in generate_token (app/models/concerns/has_secure_token.rb).

Authorization

Roles based authorization is performed with:

JSON API

A standard JSON API server is exposed using JSON API Resources

Caching

Fulltext Search

Excel

PDF

Background Job Processor & Scheduler

Email