Devise "Confirmation token is invalid" when user signs up

Question

Using Rails 4 and Devise 3.1.0 on my web app. I wrote a Cucumber test to test user sign up; it fails when the "confirm my account" link is clicked from the e-mail.

Scenario: User signs up with valid data                                                           # features/users/sign_up.feature:9
    When I sign up with valid user data                                                             # features/step_definitions/user_steps.rb:87
    Then I should receive an email                                                                  # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:51
    When I open the email                                                                           # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:76
    Then I should see the email delivered from "[email protected]"                                # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:116
    And I should see "You can confirm your account email through the link below:" in the email body # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:108
    When I follow "Confirm my account" in the email                                                 # features/step_definitions/email_steps.rb:178
    Then I should be signed in                                                                      # features/step_definitions/user_steps.rb:142
      expected to find text "Logout" in "...Confirmation token is invalid..." (RSpec::Expectations::ExpectationNotMetError)
     ./features/step_definitions/user_steps.rb:143:in `/^I should be signed in$

This error is reproducible when I sign up manually through the web server as well, so it doesn't appear to be a Cucumber issue.

I would like:

• The user to be able to one-click confirm their account through this e-mail's link
• Have the user stay signed in after confirming their account

I have setup:

• The latest Devise code, from GitHub (3.1.0, ref 041fcf90807df5efded5fdcd53ced80544e7430f)
• A User class that implements confirmable
• Using the 'default' confirmation controller (I have not defined my own custom one.)

I have read these posts:

• Devise confirmation_token is invalid
• Devise 3.1: Now with more secure defaults
• GitHub Issue - Devise confirmation_token invalid

And have tried:

• Setting config.allow_insecure_tokens_lookup = true in my Devise initializer, which throws an 'unknown method' error on startup. Plus it sounds like this is only supposed to be a temporary fix, so I'd like to avoid using it.
• Purged my DB and started from scratch (so no old tokens are present)

Update:

Checking the confirmation token stored on the User after registering. The emails token matches the DBs token. According to the posts above, the new Devise behavior says not supposed to, and that instead it is should generate a second token based on the e-mail's token. This is suspicious. Running User.confirm_by_token('[EMAIL_CONFIRMATION_TOKEN]') returns a User who has errors set "@messages={:confirmation_token=>["is invalid"]}", which appears to be the source of the issue.

Mismatching tokens seems to be the heart of the issue; running the following code in console to manually change the User's confirmation_token causes confirmation to succeed:

new_token = Devise.token_generator.digest(User, :confirmation_token, '[EMAIL_TOKEN]')
u = User.first
u.confirmation_token = new_token
u.save
User.confirm_by_token('[EMAIL_TOKEN]') # Succeeds

So why is it saving the wrong confirmation token to the DB in the first place? I am using a custom registration controller... maybe there's something in it that causes it to be set incorrectly?

routes.rb

  devise_for  :users,
          :path => '',
          :path_names => {
            :sign_in => 'login',
            :sign_out => 'logout',
            :sign_up => 'register'
            },
          :controllers => {
            :registrations => "users/registrations",
            :sessions => "users/sessions"
          }

users/registrations_controller.rb:

class Users::RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController

  def create
    # Custom code to fix DateTime issue
    Utils::convert_params_date_select params[:user][:profile_attributes], :birthday, nil, true

    super
  end

  def sign_up_params
    # TODO: Still need to fix this. Strong parameters with nested attributes not working.
    #       Permitting all is a security hazard.
    params.require(:user).permit!
    #params.require(:user).permit(:email, :password, :password_confirmation, :profile_attributes)
  end
  private :sign_up_params
end

Eimile

Does the base url in your confirmation email match your local server? E.g. if it's supposed to be localhost:3000 is that what you're sending in the email? – Spouse

Yes, my site is running at mysite.com:3000, its config is set to config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => 'mysite.com:3000' } and the e-mail link directs to mysite.com:3000. – Eimile

So when you're running in development and testing modes, you are doing so at mysite.com:3000 for both? – Spouse

Development uses my local web server mysite.com:3000 which is a host file redirect to localhost. Test actually uses Cucumber/Capybara/Poltergeist/PhantomJS to run the application and email_spec to dance around the need for an actual web server; I'm confident the test environment is fine, considering the issue is reproducible in my development environment anyways. – Eimile

Looks like I've bumped into the same issue, but with password reset. – Towns

Answer 1

So upgrading to Devise 3.1.0 left some 'cruft' in a view that I hadn't touched in a while.

According to this blog post, you need to change your Devise mailer to use @token instead of the old @resource.confirmation_token.

Find this in app/views/<user>/mailer/confirmation_instructions.html.erb and change it to something like:

<p>Welcome <%= @resource.email %>!</p>
<p>You can confirm your account email through the link below:</p>
<p><%= link_to 'Confirm my account', confirmation_url(@resource, :confirmation_token => @token) %></p>

This should fix any token-based confirmation problems you're having. This is likely to fix any unlock or reset password token problems as well.

Eimile

Thanks a lot. I really did not understood what was going on! Many changes by the way, the article is very helpful. – Betoken

Thank you, @Dave! The same holds true for the password reset template. Change to link_to 'Change my password', edit_password_url(@resource, reset_password_token: @token) – Bunk

github.com/plataformatec/devise/blob/… – Twentyfour

...and same thing for unlock_instructions.html template – Radioactivity

@Bunk 's comment should be part of the answer as well! Thanks for pointing this out! – Expiation

This doesn't really explain what's happening though. I'm trying to do a visit user_confirmation_path(confirmation_token: user.confirmation_token) from a test, and after reading this I guess I need to figure out how to create @token. Did you ever get to the bottom of what was actually happening under the covers @david-elner? – Collide

I wrote an issue on the Devise GitHub page with a full explanation of why it was happening. There's more discussion and an explanation from the gem author there, too. – Eimile

Answer 2

A friend of mine just found this question and emailed me asking if I had figured this out, which reminded me that I never submitted my own answer, so here goes :)

I ended up resetting the token & using send to get the raw token. It's ugly, but it works in a punch for devise (3.5.1).

26   it "should auto create org" do
27     email = FG.generate :email
28     visit new_user_registration_path
29     fill_in :user_name, with: 'Ryan Angilly'
30     fill_in :user_user_provided_email, with: email
31     fill_in :user_password, with: '1234567890'
32 
33     expect do
34       click_button 'Continue'
35     end.to change { Organization.count }.by(1)
36 
37     expect(page.current_path).to eq(confirmation_required_path)
38     u = User.where(email: email).first
39     u.send :generate_confirmation_token
40     email_token = u.instance_variable_get(:@raw_confirmation_token)
41     u.save!
42     os = u.organizations
43     expect(os.size).to eq(1)
44     visit user_confirmation_path(confirmation_token: email_token)
45     o = os.first
46 
47     u.reload
48     expect(u.confirmed?)
49     expect(page.current_url).to eq(organization_getting_started_url(o))
50   end

Collide

Answer 3

As of devise 3.5.2, the confirmation token is no longer digested during the confirmation process. This means that the token in the email will match the token in the database.

I was still having trouble with confirmations after figuring this out, but in my case it turned out to be a bug I introduced when I overrode find_first_by_auth_conditions. By fixing the bug I introduced in that method, I fixed my errors with confirmation.

Sulfonal