Clearance
A small, simple, and well-tested Rails authentication engine for email and password authentication.
What is Clearance?
Clearance is a Rails authentication engine that provides a complete, opinionated system for handling user authentication with email and password. It solves the common need for a secure, customizable authentication layer in Rails applications without requiring developers to build it from scratch. It includes features like user registration, login, password resets, and session management out of the box.
Rails developers who need a straightforward, well-tested authentication solution for their applications without the complexity of larger frameworks. It's ideal for projects where email/password authentication is sufficient and customization is important.
Developers choose Clearance for its simplicity, ease of integration, and strong testability. Unlike more monolithic authentication solutions, it's lightweight, follows Rails conventions, and offers fine-grained control over controllers, views, and authentication logic through overrides and the SignInGuard stack.
Overview
Rails authentication with email & password.
Use Cases
Best For
- Adding email/password authentication to a new Rails application quickly
- Projects that need a customizable authentication system without external dependencies
- Teams that prefer convention over configuration but want escape hatches for customization
- Applications requiring fine-grained access control via routing constraints
- Testing authentication flows efficiently with built-in helpers and backdoor middleware
- Extending sign-in logic with custom guards (e.g., email confirmation, user suspension)
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring OAuth or social login integrations without additional gems
- Applications needing built-in multi-factor authentication or advanced security features
- Teams wanting a fully pre-styled, drop-in authentication UI with no CSS work
- Non-Rails frameworks, as it's tightly coupled to Ruby on Rails
Pros & Cons
Pros
As a Rails engine, it can be added with a generator that sets up models, controllers, and migrations, reducing initial setup time and following Rails conventions.
All controllers, views, and routes can be subclassed or overridden, and the SignInGuard stack allows for extensible middleware, giving developers fine-grained control over authentication flows.
Includes RSpec and TestUnit helpers, backdoor middleware for fast integration tests, and generators for feature specs, making it easy to build and maintain test suites.
Provides opinionated, well-tested defaults for email/password authentication, session management, and routing constraints, while remaining easy to override via configuration.
Cons
Out of the box, it only supports email and password authentication, lacking built-in features for OAuth, social logins, or multi-factor authentication, which requires additional development.
To modify default views or controllers, developers must subclass or copy files, which can be more involved than using solutions with pre-built, configurable components.
As a Rails engine, it's not suitable for applications built on other frameworks, and its tight integration means updates or changes are tied to Rails versions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
DeviseFlexible authentication solution for Rails with Warden.
deviseFlexible authentication solution for Rails with Warden.
OmniAuthOmniAuth is a flexible authentication system utilizing Rack middleware.
doorkeeperDoorkeeper is an OAuth 2 provider for Ruby on Rails / Grape.
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