TIL: Secure ActiveAdmin with HTTP Basic Authentication

ActiveAdmin is an invaluable tool for doing MVP’s or quick Prototypes in Rails.

But most of the time I don’t want to include Devise or some other authentication solution. Which make HTTP Basic Authentication the simplest solution.

This is how to (insecurely) secure you ActiveAdmin install with HTTP Basic Authentication:

# config/initializers/active_admin.rb

Rails.configuration.to_prepare do
  ActiveAdmin::BaseController.class_eval do
    http_basic_authenticate_with name: 'some username', password: 'password'
  end
end