Makes it dead easy to do HTTP Token authentication.

Simple Token example:

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  TOKEN = "secret"

  before_action :authenticate, except: [ :index ]

  def index
    render plain: "Everyone can see me!"
  end

  def edit
    render plain: "I'm only accessible if you know the password"
  end

  private
    def authenticate
      authenticate_or_request_with_http_token do |token, options|
        # Compare the tokens in a time-constant manner, to mitigate
        # timing attacks.
        ActiveSupport::SecurityUtils.secure_compare(token, TOKEN)
      end
    end
end

Here is a more advanced Token example where only Atom feeds and the XML API is protected by HTTP token authentication, the regular HTML interface is protected by a session approach:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_action :set_account, :authenticate

  private
    def set_account
      @account = Account.find_by(url_name: request.subdomains.first)
    end

    def authenticate
      case request.format
      when Mime[:xml], Mime[:atom]
        if user = authenticate_with_http_token { |t, o| @account.users.authenticate(t, o) }
          @current_user = user
        else
          request_http_token_authentication
        end
      else
        if session_authenticated?
          @current_user = @account.users.find(session[:authenticated][:user_id])
        else
          redirect_to(login_url) and return false
        end
      end
    end
end

In your integration tests, you can do something like this:

def test_access_granted_from_xml
  authorization = ActionController::HttpAuthentication::Token.encode_credentials(users(:dhh).token)

  get "/notes/1.xml", headers: { 'HTTP_AUTHORIZATION' => authorization }

  assert_equal 200, status
end

On shared hosts, Apache sometimes doesn't pass authentication headers to FCGI instances. If your environment matches this description and you cannot authenticate, try this rule in your Apache setup:

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ dispatch.fcgi [E=X-HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%{HTTP:Authorization},QSA,L]