If you configure basic or digest authorization on Apache/Lighthttpd/nginx, when a user is authenticated, the "REMOTE_USER" is set to the user that was authenticated. This Rack middleware lets you do development outside of a web server by setting REMOTE_USER automatically. Useful for Intranet based websites that are authenticated against Active D…

ensure_remote_user.rb

  # Injects a default REMOTE_USER into the headers so your Ruby app sees someone as being
  # "logged in" (authenticated) as would normally happen when the web server has been configured
  # to do basic or digest authentication before passing through to the web app.
  module Rack
    class EnsureRemoteUser
      def initialize(app)
        logger.debug "Ensure REMOTE_USER module initialized!" 
        @app = app
      end

      def call(env)
        unless env['REMOTE_USER']
          env['REMOTE_USER'] = 'DEVELOPER' 
          logger.warn "Setting REMOTE_USER to 'DEVELOPER'"
        end
        @app.call(env)
      end
    end
  end

  ##
  # If you're running Sinatra/Padrino or Rails,
  # you can load this module only in development mode by calling
  # the "use" method only in that environment's block like so:
  #
  configure :development do
    use Rack::EnsureRemoteUser
  end