== Rails Captcha demo

a few examples of captcha on a rails 2.3.5 app

http://simple-captcha-demo.heroku.com/

blog post on http://railsperformance.blogspot.com
http://railsperformance.blogspot.com/2011/03/rails-captcha-plugins.html

github repo https://github.com/jmccaffrey/rails_captcha_demo

My requirements were:
 "add a captcha to the forgot password page"

I looked on ruby-toolbox (http://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rails_captcha.html) to see what plugins were being used and had good traction, and narrowed it to these three:

Simple-Captcha
    http://expressica.com/simple_captcha
		1. requires rmagick to create the image
		2. requires db:migrate to persist the keyed answer
		3. works well, easy enough to change
		
		
		script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/expressica/plugins/simple_captcha 
		  rake simple_captcha:setup  
		  rake db:migrate

		 #add to routes
		   map.simple_captcha '/simple_captcha/:action', :controller => 'simple_captcha'

		 #add to application_controller
		   include SimpleCaptcha::ControllerHelpers

reCaptcha (sponsored by google)
   http://www.google.com/recaptcha
		1.commonly used, well tested, looks professional
		2. requires outbound http call, (may have to deal with proxies)
		3. can handle ssl
		4. can play audio if text is too hard
		5. expects String.html_safe (rails > 2.3.7), had to monkey patch a do nothing method
		6. has styling options, but I had problems getting it to look right in the form I was using 
		
		script/plugin install git://github.com/ambethia/recaptcha.git

		# in config/initializers/recaptcha.rb

		  #monkey patch to fix html_safe method
		  class String
		    def html_safe
		      self
		    end
		  end

		  # get an api key (free) from http://www.google.com/recaptcha
		  ENV['RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY'] = 'youractualpublickey'
		  ENV['RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY'] = 'youractualprivatekey'

		# in the view, inside your form

		<%= recaptcha_tags %>

		# in the controller
		 def update
		    @user = User.find(params[:id])
		    if verify_recaptcha
		      if @user.update_attributes(params[:user])
		        flash[:notice] = 'User was successfully updated.'
		        redirect_to(@user) 
		      else
		        render :action => "edit"
		      end
		    else  
		      flash[:error] = 'Captcha no good' 
		      render :action => "edit"
		    end
		  end

BrainBuster
   https://github.com/rsanheim/brain_buster
		1. doesn't make 3rd party outbound call
		2. doesn't require rmagick
		3. does require a db table to store a set of questions
		4. presents the user with a set of logic questions
		5. by default uses cookies to flag that a user has answered successfully, but that can be turned off to always challenge the user
		6. handles numeric to text conversion when a user answers 'five' or '5'