A while ago, I wrote a PostgreSQL auth plugin for Rails. The plugin basically defers all authentication and authorization worries to the database layer where they are supposed to be taken care of anyway.

Using this plugin, the user is asked for his or her credentials using a HTTP Basic authentication challenge. (The code for this is adapted from Coda Hale‘s Basic HTTP authentication plugin.) It’s possible to specify a guest_username in the database.yml which will be used as a fall-back if no credentials are supplied. After successful login or if a guest user is found, the plugin will make sure that all database operations run as that user. If any operation fails due to insufficient user rights, the user will be prompted for a username/password pair again.

Detailed and up-to-date documentation for the plugin can always be found at the plugin’s homepage. Go to the plugin’s project page for getting help or for reporting issues with the plugin.