Devise: Require customers to be activated before login

Assume you have you have a devise model customer. Customers should be able to sign up, but should be reviewed and activated (i.e. by an admin) before they can login.

First, add a column “active to the customer model:

$> rails g migration AddActiveToCustomers active:boolean

It’s a good idea to make the default false:

class AddActiveToCustomers < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :customers, :active, :boolean, :default => false
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :customers, :active
  end
end

Then you have to customize the inactive message. In your Rails.root/app/modelscustomer.rb:

class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :active # Make the active flag accessible, if you want to set it from anywhere (i.e. in an application backend
  
  def active_for_authentication?
    active
  end 
  
  def inactive_message
    "inactive"
  end 
  .
  .
  .

end

That's it. If a customer signs up, he will not be able to login, before the active flag has been set to true in the database.