How To: Change the default sign_in and sign_out routes

When you are using only one role with Devise you may want to change the sign in and sign out routes to /login and /logout (instead of @/users/sign_in@ and @/users/sign_out@).

This does not work by default because Devise inspects the URL to find which scope you are accessing. So when it sees @"/users/login"@, it knows the scope is @"user"@, however, when you access @"/login"@, Devise cannot know which scope it should use. Luckily, Devise provides a mechanism to specify a default scope, allowing us to have short URLs.

Steps for Rails 3.0.0 forward

All you need to do is to specify in your routes the @devise_scope@ being accessed in that URL:

devise_scope :user do
  get "/login" => "devise/sessions#new"
end

Since @devise_scope@ is aliased to @as@, this is equivalent:

as :user do
  get "/login" => "devise/sessions#new"
end

Similarly for @sign_out@:

devise_scope :user do
  delete "/logout" => "devise/sessions#destroy"
end

Note that you can skip all sessions routes and define only your own using the skip option as below:

  devise_for :users, :skip => [:sessions]
  as :user do
    get 'signin' => 'devise/sessions#new', :as => :new_user_session
    post 'signin' => 'devise/sessions#create', :as => :user_session
    delete 'signout' => 'devise/sessions#destroy', :as => :destroy_user_session
  end

This way @:authenticate_user!@ and other helpers will be redirecting the user to the proper custom pages you defined.

Note that if you are making use of the @:sign_out_via@ configuration option, then the @'signout'@ action above may cause errors. You can duplicate the default behavior (which changes from @delete@ to @get@ based on @:sign_out_via@) by specifying:

  devise_for :users, :skip => [:sessions]
  as :user do
    get 'signin' => 'devise/sessions#new', :as => :new_user_session
    post 'signin' => 'devise/sessions#create', :as => :user_session
    match 'signout' => 'devise/sessions#destroy', :as => :destroy_user_session,
      :via => Devise.mappings[:user].sign_out_via
  end

h2. Another simple way to do the same thing

The @devise_for@ method has a lot of optional parameters to make things easier. If you just want to remove the "users" namespace before all the routes and rename "sign_in", "sign_out" to "login", "logout". Try this way:

devise_for :users, :path => '', :path_names => {:sign_in => 'login', :sign_out => 'logout'}

if you want to use multiple Devise controllers (like passwords) you should still use the first way.