How To: Customize user account status validation when logging in

Sometimes you want to add custom validation to the user before logging them in. In this case I needed to implement an account_active boolean (true or false) check. So if it's true it will allow the user to login and create a session, if false it will display the "account not active" error.

Overwrite the active_for_authentication? method in your model (User) and add your validation logic. You want to return super && (true or false)

      def active_for_authentication?
        # Uncomment the below debug statement to view the properties of the returned self model values.
        # logger.debug self.to_yaml
        	
        super && account_active?
      end

In this case it checks the boolean value to account_active and it return it's value to the sign in method that called it.

The original active_for_authentication? method can be found in devise/lib/devise/models/authenticatable.rb.

Note: active_for_authentication? is called by Devise after authenticating user and in each request that follows. This means whatever code you add to the override of active_for_authentication? will be run for every request during the user's session.

Note: active_for_authentication? is not being called for each request when using database_authenticatable. It only gets called on login. Not sure if this is intended behavior.

Customize error message

If the method 'active_for_authentication?' returns false, method 'inactive_message' is invoked, user will receive notification for being inactive. We need to customize the message as well:

  def inactive_message
    account_active? ? super : :account_inactive
  end

Now this will refer the custom message for 'account_inactive' and not 'inactive', which we need to define in devise translation file.

   devise:
     failure:
       inactive: 'Your account was not activated yet.'
       account_inactive: 'Your account is not active.'