Unpermitted Parameters adding new fields to Devise in rails 4.0

Question

Very new to working with rails. I have implemented a basic login system using Devise. I am trying to add a couple of new fields (bio:string, name:string) into the sign_up page. I have everything displaying correctly and the new fields are added to the database (when I view it in SQLbrowser) however, they are not populating and after the user submits the sign_up form there is a message which part of it says:

Unpermitted parameters: bio, name

I have added the 2 strings to the _devise_create_users.rb

  # added
  t.string :bio
  t.string :name

And I have them showing up in the schema.rb

ActiveRecord::Schema.define(version: 20130629002343) do

  create_table "users", force: true do |t|
    t.string   "email",                  default: "",    null: false
    t.string   "encrypted_password",     default: "",    null: false
    t.string   "reset_password_token"
    t.datetime "reset_password_sent_at"
    t.datetime "remember_created_at"
    t.integer  "sign_in_count",          default: 0
    t.datetime "current_sign_in_at"
    t.datetime "last_sign_in_at"
    t.string   "current_sign_in_ip"
    t.string   "last_sign_in_ip"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
    t.string   "shortbio"
    t.boolean  "admin",                  default: false
    t.string   "realname"
    t.string   "name"
    t.string   "bio"
  end

  add_index "users", ["email"], name: "index_users_on_email", unique: true
  add_index "users", ["reset_password_token"], name: "index_users_on_reset_password_token", unique: true

end

My user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Include default devise modules. Others available are:
   #:token_authenticatable, :confirmable,
   #:lockable, :timeoutable and :omniauthable
  devise :database_authenticatable, :registerable,
         :recoverable, :rememberable, :trackable, :validatable

end

Is this problem something to do with Strong Parameters? I am having a hard time wrapping my head around them and where/how to implement.

Answer 1

The accepted solution is good enough, but I see two problems: 1) All the controllers will check if the current controller is the devise controller (if: :devise_controller?) and 2) We need to write all the acceptable parameters in the method (...for(:sign_up) {|u| u.permit(:bio, :name)}), even the :email, :password and so on.

I think that a more elegant solution could be:

# app/controllers/users/registrations_controller.rb
class Users::RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
  before_filter :configure_permitted_parameters

  protected

  def configure_permitted_parameters
    devise_parameter_sanitizer.for(:sign_up).push(:name, :phone, :organization)
  end
end

# config/routes.rb
devise_for :users, :controllers => { :registrations => "users/registrations" }

NOTE: Updates for Rails 4.2+

This answer is falling out of date:

• Change "users" to "user" in the "users/registration" path for Rails 4.2.1 and Devise 3.4.1.
• devise_parameter_sanitizer.permit() replaces devise_parameter_sanitizer.for() for Devise 4 (see Rails 5, Undefined method `for' for #<Devise on line devise_parameter_sanitizer.for)

Answer 2

Make sure you are using Devise 3.0.0 at least. Add to your application controller:

before_filter :update_sanitized_params, if: :devise_controller?

def update_sanitized_params
  devise_parameter_sanitizer.for(:sign_up) {|u| u.permit(:bio, :name)}
end

Documentation: https://github.com/plataformatec/devise#strong-parameters

Answer 3

I was having trouble with this too. The documentation on devise's site helped as well as some forums. Here's what I ended up doing:

In custom RegistrationsController (app/controllers/users/registrations_controller.rb)

# app/controllers/users/registrations_controller.rb

class Users::RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
    before_filter :update_sanitized_params, if: :devise_controller?

    def update_sanitized_params
       devise_parameter_sanitizer.for(:sign_up) {|u| u.permit(:name, :email,   :password, :password_confirmation)}
    end
end

Then in your route file (config/routes.rb) us this for your devise_for statement:

devise_for :users, controllers: {registrations: "users/registrations"}