Validate website ownership in rails

Question

For a more recent discussion about a similar topic check this question out.

What\'s the best way to validate whether a particular user has ownership of a website?

Answer 1

This is is how you could validate a domain using the google subdomain approach in a RESTful style. You will allow a user to create a Site record, which will remain unverified until the user later clicks a link/button to verify the domain at a later time (to allow DNS propagation).

This code is untested but will get you started.

Model:

class Site < ActiveRecord::Base
  # schema
  # create_table "sites", :force => true do |t|
  #  t.string   "domain"
  #  t.string   "cname"
  #  t.integer  "user_id"
  #  t.boolean  "verified"
  #  t.datetime "created_at"
  #  t.datetime "updated_at"
  # end

  require "resolv"

  YOUR_DOMAIN = "example.com"

  belongs_to :user
  before_create :generate_cname

  attr_accessible :domain
  …

  # Validate unless already validated
  def validate!
    validate_cname unless self.verifed == true
  end

  protected

  # Generate a random string for cname
  def generate_cname
    chars = ('a'..'z').to_a
    self.cname = 10.times.collect { chars[rand(chars.length)] }.join
  end

  # Sets verifed to true if there is a CNAME record matching the cname attr and it points to this site.
  def validate_cname
    Resolv::DNS.open do |domain|
      @dns = domain.getresources("#{cname}.#{domain}", Resolv::DNS::Resource::IN::CNAME)
     self.verified = !@dns.empty? && @dns.first.name.to_s == YOUR_DOMAIN
    end
  end

end

Controller

class SitesController < ActionController::Base
  # Usual RESTful controller actions
  # …

  def validate
    @site = current_user.sites.find(params[:id])
    @site.validate!

    respond_to do |format|
      if @site.save && @site.verified
        flash[:notice] = 'Site verified!'
        format.html { redirect_to(@site) }
        format.xml  { head :ok }
      else
        flash[:Error] = 'Site verification failed!'
        format.html { redirect_to(@site) }
        format.xml  { render :status => :unprocessable_entity }
      end
    end

  end
end

Put this in routes.rb:

map.resources :sites, :member => { :validate => :put }

I'll leave implementing the views as an exercise for you.