DDevelopment & Design

How to keep session in HttpBuilder with cookies

In my real-world scenario I have a REST service for AJAX purposes. It renders data series for graphs. I want to test it with groovy’s excellent HttpBuilder. There is a problem though – these requests are only available for already logged in users. In t…

In my real-world scenario I have a REST service for AJAX purposes. It renders data series for graphs. I want to test it with groovy’s excellent HttpBuilder. There is a problem though – these requests are only available for already logged in users.

In this post I present a complete solution to maintain a session state between HttpBuilder‘s requests.

Session in HttpBuilder

First of all a quick reminder about session. Session is a simulation of state for HTTP requests, which are stateless by its nature. Once you log in you receive a unique cookie (one or more) that identifies you for sequential requests. Every time you send request you send this cookie along. This way server recognizes you and matches you to your session, which is kept on server. Cookie gets invlid once you log out or it times out, for example after 20 minutes of inactivity. Next time you visit a page you get a new, unique cookie.

In order to keep session alive in HttpBuilder I need to:

  1. log in to my Grails application
  2. receive a JSESSIONID cookie in response
  3. store that cookie and send it along with every subsenquential request

I’ve created RestConnectorclass that wraps up HttpBuilder. It’s main improvement is that it keeps received cookie in a list.

package eu.spoonman.connectors.RestConnector

import groovyx.net.http.Method
import groovyx.net.http.ContentType
import groovyx.net.http.HTTPBuilder
import groovyx.net.http.HttpResponseDecorator

class RestConnector {
    private String baseUrl
    private HTTPBuilder httpBuilder
    private List < String > cookies

    RestConnector(String url) {
        this.baseUrl = url
        this.httpBuilder = initializeHttpBuilder()
        this.cookies = []
    }

    public def request(Method method, ContentType contentType, String url, Map < String, Serializable > params) {
        debug("Send $method request to ${this.baseUrl}$url: $params")
        httpBuilder.request(method, contentType) {
            request ->
                uri.path = url
            uri.query = params
            headers['Cookie'] = cookies.join(';')
        }
    }

    private HTTPBuilder initializeHttpBuilder() {
        def httpBuilder = new HTTPBuilder(baseUrl)

        httpBuilder.handler.success = {
            HttpResponseDecorator resp,
            reader ->
            resp.getHeaders('Set-Cookie').each {
                //[Set-Cookie: JSESSIONID=E68D4799D4D6282F0348FDB7E8B88AE9; Path=/frontoffice/; HttpOnly]
                String cookie = it.value.split(';')[0]
                debug("Adding cookie to collection: $cookie")
                cookies.add(cookie)
            }
            debug("Response: ${reader}")
            return reader
        }
        return httpBuilder
    }

    private debug(String message) {
        System.out.println(message) //for Gradle
    }
}

 

A few things to notice in a class above. Constructor sets base URL and creates HttpBuilder instance that can be reused. Next, there is a handler on successful request that checks if I receive any cookie. It adds received cookies to list. Finally, there is a request method that calls HttpBuilder#requestbut it adds cookies to HTTP headers so server can recognize me as a logged in user.

Sending cookies with every request is a core component in here. It simulates browser’s behavior and maintains session.

How to use it?

I will show you how to use this utility class it in Spock test below. It is fairly simple.

First I login to my application and I ensure that I receive a cookie in return, which is equivalent to being logged in. Then I send a request with that cookie sent in HTTP header. This is a Spock test that implements it:

package eu.spoonman.specs.rest

import eu.spoonman.connectors.RestConnector.RestConnector
import groovyx.net.http.ContentType
import groovyx.net.http.Method
import spock.lang.Shared
import spock.lang.Specification
import spock.lang.Stepwise

@Stepwise
class RestChartSpec extends Specification {
    @Shared
    RestConnector restConnector

    def setupSpec() {
        restConnector = new RestConnector('http://localhost:8080')
    }

    def "should login as test"() {
        given: Map params = [j_username: 'test', j_password: 'test']
        when: restConnector.request(Method.POST, ContentType.ANY, '/frontoffice/j_spring_security_check', params)
        then:
            !(restConnector.cookies.empty)
    }

    def "should allow access to chart data series"() {
        given: Map params = [days: 14]
        when: Map result = restConnector.request(Method.POST, ContentType.JSON, "frontoffice/chart/series", params)
        then: result != null
        result.series.size() > 0
    }
}

 

I create a new RestConnector instance in setupSpecwith my application’s base URL. Please notice that it has @Sharedannotation so it’s shared between tests.

@Stepwise is crucial annotation for this specification. It means that Spock executes tests exactly in order they’re defined. I need to ensure that login is executed first. I also need to assert that I receive a cookie and list is not empty. I could move this step into setupSpec method too, but I prefer it to be a first test in a specification.

Second test is always executed after login thus it sends cookies within request headers. This is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

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Log4j and MDC in Grails

Log4j provides very useful feature: MDC - mapped diagnostic context. It can be used to store data in context of current thread. It may sound scary a bit but idea is simple.

My post is based on post http://burtbeckwith.com/blog/?p=521 from Burt Beckwith's excellent blog, it's definitely worth checking if you are interested in Grails.

Short background story...


Suppose we want to do logging our brand new shopping system and we want to have in each log customer's shopping basket number. And our system can be used at once by many users who can perform many transactions, actions like adding items and so on. How can we achieve that? Of course we can add basket number in every place where we do some logging but this task would be boring and error-prone. 

Instead of this we can use MDC to store variable with basket number in map. 

In fact MDC can be treated as map of custom values for current thread that can be used by logger. 


How to do that with Grails?


Using MDC with Grails is quite simple. All we need to do is to create our own custom filter which works for given urls and puts our data in MDC.

Filters in Grails are classes in directory grails-app/conf/* which names end with *Filters.groovy postfix. We can create this class manually or use Grails command: 
grails create-filters info.rnowak.App.Basket

In result class named BasketFilters will be created in grails-app/conf/info/rnowak/UberApp.

Initially filter class looks a little bit empty:
class BasketFilters {
    def filters = {
        all(controller:'*', action:'*') {
            before = {

            }
            after = { Map model ->

            }
            afterView = { Exception e ->

            }
        }
    }
}
All we need to do is fill empty closures, modify filter properties and put some data into MDC.

all is the general name of our filter, as class BasketFilters (plural!) can contain many various filters. You can name it whatever you want, for this post let assume it will be named basketFilter. 

Another thing is change of filter parameters. According to official documentation (link) we can customize our filter in many ways. You can specify controller to be filtered, its actions, filtered urls and so on. In our example you can stay with default option where filter is applied to every action of every controller. If you are interested in filtering only some urls, use uri parameter with expression describing desired urls to be filtered.

Three closures that are already defined in template have their function and they are started in these conditions:

  • before - as name says, it is executed before filtered action takes place
  • after - similarly, it is called after the action
  • afterView - called after rendering of the actions view
Ok, so now we know what are these mysterious methods and when they are called. But what can be done within them? In official Grails docs (link again) under section 7.6.3 there is a list of properties that are available to use in filter.

With that knowledge, we can proceed to implementing filter.

Putting something into MDC in filter


What we want to do is quite easy: we want to retrieve basket number from parameters and put it into MDC in our filter:
class BasketFilters {
    def filters = {
        basketFilter(controller:'*', action:'*') {
            before = {
                MDC.put("basketNumber", params.basketNumber ?: "")
            }
            after = { Map model ->
                MDC.remove("basketNumber")
            }
        }
    }
}

We retrieve basket number from Grails params map and then we put in map under specified key ("basketNumber" in this case), which will be later used in logger conversion pattern. It is important to remove custom value after processing of action to avoid leaks.

So we are putting something into MDC. But how make use of it in logs?


We can refer to custom data in MDC in conversion patter using syntax: %X{key}, where key is our key we used in filter to put data, like:
def conversionPattern = "%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %-5p %t [%c{1}] %X{basketNumber} - %m%n"


And that's it :) We've put custom data in log4j MDC and successfully used it in logs to display interesting values.