Gregor Schneider wrote:
> Chris,
>
> On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 4:07 AM, Christopher Schultz
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> A few questions:
>>
> Chris, maybe you'll get the hang of this Valve if I explain the
> business-requirement I had:
>
> My primary target was to cirumvent the problem having a framed
> web-app, where some content is requested after the session has timed
> out.
>
> let's say we have the following website-structure:
>
> +----------------------------------------+
> | menue1| |
> | menue2| some_content |
> | menue3| |
> | menue4| |
> | menue5| |
> +-----------------------------------------+
>
> (hope the formatting is ok )
>
> "some_content" is an iframe, and the content of this iframe is changed
> by selecting one of the left menue-items.
> The iframe is specified in "index.html such as:
>
> <html>
> <body>
> <iframe name="some_content" src="/protected/somepage.html">
> Some iframe-error-message
> </iframe>
> </body>
> </html>
>
> Now let's assume, session is timing out, and after that timeout the
> user selects one of the menue-entries on the left side.
> What's happening?
>
> The url requested will look like "http://mysite/protected/some_stuff";
>
> The HTML in that case looks like
>
> <a href="http://mysite/protected/some_stuff.html";
> target="some_content">menue4</a>
>
> No this triggers j_security_check, but unfortunately j_security_check
> just stores the last request, and after passing the credentials,
> you'll won't see your "index.html" but "/protected/some_stuff.html" -
> without the iframe and aboviously without the menue.
Alternative:
I don't have this to hand anymore since the original site was changed
and I'm not the dev for it anymore, but we put a frame-busting
javascript on the login page instead, it loaded our preferred start URL
instead of just busting the frame.
Not ideal if you want to do it all server-side, but it worked for us.
p
> So the purpose of this Valve is to provide a mechanism which makes
> sure, that if a non-authorized request comes in requesting anything
> else but your "/protected/index.html", that the original request (i.e.
> "/protected/some_stuff") is replaced by
> "/protected/index.html" (or any other url being specified in the
> Valve-descriptor).
>
> Now take a look at some example-Valve-descriptor:
>
> <Context>
> <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.LoginValve"
> protectedPath="/protected"
> redirectAfterAuth="/protected/index.html"/>
> </Context>
>
> This basically says, that all /non-authorized/ requests to the
> protected content will be re-routed to "/protected/index.html"
> (redirectAfterAuth).
>
>> 1. Why can't the "redirectAfterAuth" path be within the protected space?
>>
>
> Actually I do not see why this shouldn't be possible: Actually the
> idea is, that redirectAfterAuth /must/ be in the protected area
>
> If you take a look at the first condition:
>
> + if (aRequest.getRequestURI().startsWith(protectedPath)
> + &&
> !aRequest.getRequestURI().startsWith(redirectAfterAuth)
> + && !aRequest.getRequestURI().startsWith(
> + "/j_security_check",
> 10)) {
>
> Basically it says:
>
> - Only URLs are handled being in my protected area
> - the URL must /not/ be equal my default protected starting-URL
> - the URL requested must /not/ be j_security_check
>
> The two latter conditions are necessary to avoid an infinite loop when
> accessing protected content
>
>> 2. Why do you check to see if the request URI /startsWith/ the
>> redirectAfterAuth instead of being equal to it?
>
> Because there might be some parameters after the adress in the URL -
> i.e., if Cookies are not possible so that the session-information is
> stored within the URL
>
>> 3. Why are you checking to see if characters 10 - 16 of the request URI
>> are "y_check". Why not check for the whole "j_security_check" string?
>> Why not check the /end/ of the request URI for j_security_check,
>> since the URI for j_security_check is not required to be
>> /j_security_check but pretty much */j_security_check?
>
> You are right with this:
>
> Actually I made a mistake here:
>
> When "j_security_check" is triggered, the URL will look like
>
> /protected/j_security_check
>
> As you can see, in this example it works since "/protected" is exactly
> 10 characters long.
>
> Therefore, the correct code would be
>
> + && !aRequest.getRequestURI().startsWith(
> + "/j_security_check",
> protectedPath.length())) {
>
> I'll correct that with a new patch during the weekend.
>
> Why do I not ask for the String ending with "j_security_check"?
> I was not sure how that URL looks like if session-info is encoded
> within the URL - therefore I'm using startsWith()
>
>> 4. Why are killing the session if the authtype is null?
>
> Because we experienced with some users, esp. behind company-proxies,
> that situations may occur where a session still exists, but the
> Principal was null.
> Therefore, if Principal is null, better be safe than sorry and make
> sure you definately have a new session
>
>> 5. Why does your valve pass-through any requests before the component
>> has "started"? Is there a valid use case where NOT performing these
>> checks and redirects is appropriate?
>
> Nope. I took this code from AccessLogValve (I believe it was that
> one), and my assumption was those checks don't make sense /before/ the
> Valve is completely set (started).
> If you feel that a different approach does make more sense here, I'm
> happy for your suggestions
>
>> It appears that your valve does nothing but murder the session and
>> redirect the user if authtype=null and you are requesting a resource
>> from a particular URI space. This does not seem particularly useful.
>>
>> Maybe I'm missing something subtle.
>>
>
> Seems to be - see my explanations on top.
>
> Cheers
>
> Gregor
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