Module: ActionController::RequestForgeryProtection

Extended by:

ActiveSupport::Concern

Includes:

AbstractController::Callbacks, AbstractController::Helpers

Defined in:

lib/action_controller/metal/request_forgery_protection.rb

Overview

Controller actions are protected from Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks by including a token in the rendered HTML for your application. This token is stored as a random string in the session, to which an attacker does not have access. When a request reaches your application, Rails verifies the received token with the token in the session. All requests are checked except GET requests as these should be idempotent. Keep in mind that all session-oriented requests should be CSRF protected, including JavaScript and HTML requests.

Since HTML and JavaScript requests are typically made from the browser, we need to ensure to verify request authenticity for the web browser. We can use session-oriented authentication for these types of requests, by using the protect_from_forgery method in our controllers.

GET requests are not protected since they don't have side effects like writing to the database and don't leak sensitive information. JavaScript requests are an exception: a third-party site can use a