How can I elegantly handle devise's 401 status in AJAX?

Question

With devise one uses before_filter :authenticate_user! to restrict access to authenticated users only.

When an unauthenticated

Answer 1

A version mixing event binding with location.reload():

$(function($) {
  $("#new-user")
    .bind("ajax:error", function(event, xhr, status, error) {
      if (xhr.status == 401) {  // probable Devise timeout
        alert(xhr.responseText);
        location.reload();      // reload whole page so Devise will redirect to signin
      }
    });
});

Testing with Devise 3.1.1, this does correctly set session["user_return_to"], so the user returns to the page after signing in again ().

I added the alert as a simple way to address the inelegant message issue discussed here: Session Timeout Message in RoR using Devise