Laravel 5 - Deal with controller validation and RESTful clients like Postman - laravel-5

I am using laravel's RESTful resource routes and controllers.
I testing my api with PostMan and/or RestClient(firefox)
Everything was fine before I added laravel's controller validation. Now it respond with very strange responses like: status code 0, or even executes the code with not valid data. Or even shows strange results taken from the database (which are not included to the controller at all).
That's creepy.
For example:
public function store(Request $request) {
$this->validate($request, [
'room_id' => 'required|integer',
'body' => 'required'
]);
exit; // Stop the process after the validation...
// ... Logic to STORE the MESSAGE in the database ...
return response(null, 204);
}
This store function must only validate the data and respond with an error if validation fails,
But when I execute it from PostMan, It returns response with list of all rooms which belongs to this user. This is creepy, I cannot realize why this is happening.
When I use the jQuery.ajax() method with the same request options, it works fine. It validates the data and stores the message in the database.
Question : Is there a way to deal with postman?
Question : Is PostMan dangerous? Since the server respond with database info (which is not included to the controller responses).

If you take a closer look at laravel's validation document it says that when data is submitted via HTML form,the validate method would redirect you to a previous page and the error would be flashed into the session, if the validation fails. Although, you will be able to access these error messages in your view using the $error variable. Therefore you will need to submit the data via ajax in-order to get the JSON error message.

When validatioin failed, Laravel needs to know you are sending ajax request or you explicitly want json respond, otherwise it redirects you to previous page.
You can check my answer here
https://stackoverflow.com/a/38478362/6246592

Related

Laravel 5.6 ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS on GET request

I have a custom Request class which deals with the validation of a form. This form uses 'GET' and will filter down all the results the User can see on the page.
My rule for the start date:
'date_start' => 'nullable|date|required_with:date_end',
is causing a message:
ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS
My controller looks like this:
public function index (ApprovedSubmissionsFilterRequest $request)
{
...
I believe that this is because when the validation fails, it sends a GET request back to the index method, which once more fails the validation and redirects back to the index method etc. etc.
How do I avoid this loop? I do not want to use a POST request instead of a GET.
Here is my route:
Route::get('formSubmission', 'FormSubmissionController#index')
->name('formSubmission.index');
Thank you.
NOTE (edit):
Not all validation errors cause this - it only seems to be the required_with that is causing the issue. Somebody has mentioned it here previously.
I tried your code in my project, and cannot reproduce the problem. So do you really use the correct validation rule, because from the docs, the required_with takes an effect only if the other field that you are trying to validate exists in the request. So in your case date_start should not be present in the request and date_end should exist in order for this validation to take place:
required_with:foo,bar,...
The field under validation must be present and not empty only if any of the other specified fields are present.
Also from the github issue that you have mentioned, you can debug in the exception handler what happens when ValidationException is thrown
Your last note, have you tried with all validation rules except that one if it passes?

Pagination in Gmail API (Previous Token)

I have implemented GMail API which gets Emails for me. Now I am trying to add pagination to it I have succeed in getting next records but now I also want to have Previous option(which required previous token).
I am unable to get into it below is what I tried so far.
public function paginate(Request $request){
$label = $request->input("label");
$nextToken = $request->input("next");
$prevToken = $request->input("prev");
$messages = LaravelGmail::message();
$msg = $messages->take(3)->in($label)->all($nextToken);
$nextToken_New = $messages->pageToken;
return view('gmail.load_mails', ['messages' => $msg, 'nextPageToken' => $nextToken_New,
'prevPageToken' => $nextToken]);
}
Now In the above function nextPageToken is passed in view as $nextToken_New
and for prevPageToken I am unable to set previous page token.(In code I have set last nextPageToken to prevPageToken which is not working)
Remember prevPageToken will be used to set on back key.
The Gmail api does not support prevous page token. Its not going to return the value to you.
Your first option would be to save these tokens on your server and then when ever you want to go back a page simply supply the token you want to the page token field
The second option and the one that i personally feel would be the most logical. Would be to cache the data returned by these requests on your server so that
you dont have to make extra http calls to the server.
you are not eating addictal quota making a call you have already made before.
APIs were not meant for you to use to implement pagination in your application. You should only be requesting data once its your job to then cache that data so that you wont need to make the same request twice.

Laravel $request->all() correctly returns data, but $_POST completely empty

I am making an ajax post request to the server, posting json data. In firebug I can see the network post call going through along with the json data.
In Laravel I was trying to do a simple var dump of the $_POST data and have just wasted a fair bit of time being confused as to why this should be completely empty. However, when I use the Request facade, my data is there.
ie. this just gives me an empty array:
public function test(){
Log::info($_POST);
}
...yet this prints my data, as I expect:
public function test(Request $request){
Log::info($request->all());
}
Why?
Edit
Thanks, #Webdesigner. The http verb is definitely post, as my method is called in my routes file via
Route::post('/image-upload', 'EntryController#test'); // Note "post" verb
I don't think $request->post() is valid in Laravel 5.4 as this throws an BadMethodCallException: Method post does not exist. error. However, I can confirm that
Log::info($request->method()); // POST
also tells me the method is post.
Very strange. I guess you're right that some part of the app is overwriting the $_POST global, though I have no idea why/where/how. Probably not relevant, but this call is being made from Angular 4.
Thanks for your help anyway!
This is not the normal behavior of Laravel. I tested this on a fresh Laravel 5.5 site and just did a Form submit and an Ajax POST request to the same Route.
Both give me the same result. A POST Request should have at least the CSRF Token as _token with a value.
One other point is $request->all() is not only the the content of $_POST so to have a fair compression you should try $request->post().
BTW only because you did a POST request do not mean that the data is send by the POST Method, it could be that the data you see in $request->all() is from $_GET and $_COOKIE, etc and only the Method was a POST.
Last but not least there it the option that some part of your APP is deleting the content of the Superglobal Variables. $_POST and the others are not like constants, so they can be changed during runtime e.g. $_POST = [];
I don't thing that there is a difference in Laravel 5.4.27.

Symfony 2 - Secure Ajax Controller

I have ajax controler to store actions that are called through the AJAX from JS.
Here in every action I validate if request is made by AJAX and no other:
if (!$request->isXmlHttpRequest()) {
return new JsonResponse(array('message' => 'You can access this only using Ajax!'), 400);
}
Now the problem is that not every ajax controller action should be called by everyone, but rather depending on a role of the logged in user.
The request to action is made by AJAX from JS, but since actions are in controller I am still able to get logged in user object by $this->getUser() and to check if user has acceptable ROLE to execute the controller action by isGranted().
Example:
if (!$authorizationChecker->isGranted('ROLE_ADMIN')) {
return new JsonResponse(array('message' => 'This can be performed only by admin!'), 400);
}
Should I check ROLES from inside controller in every action or try to configure access_control for ajax routes in security.yml?
I have no idea what is the big difference between these two approaches, but would like to know which one would be more practical and could keep my ajax actions more secure.
Depends on the number of AJAX Controllers you have. If you have so many controllers those are to be allowed only for a certain role, access_control in security.yml is a good choice. Else you can have the condition in each controller.
For dynamic permission layer, where permission to be decided based on subject attribute(the viewing content), You might want to use voter.

Registering routes with Laravel but make them unaccessible

I am trying to make a single page CRUD application with Laravel. I will use ajax to create, edit and delete my entity, and also to render partial views. The corresponding controller methods will process the information and return the views.
I want to register the routes so I can call the different methods when necessary. I don't see any other way:
However, registering them so I can do something like this {{ Form::open(['route' => ['cities.store', $city->id]]) }} will allow access via the URL, and I only want to make those routes accessible through the tools I am going to create in that one page CRUD.
I can only think of applying a before filter, but what would be the filter? Also, any other ideas on how I should approach this situtation?
I've had to do something similar with a web service I created. Basically, I wanted only my app to be able to access the routes I created.
What I ended up doing was adding a hashed key to each request being sent, then checking for this key value in the controller. So, only if the key is present and matches the one sent would you then process the request.
Or, if you're using forms, you could do something like the following:
//check if request was sent from our form
if ( Session::token() !== Input::get( '_token' ) ) {
return Response::json( array(
'msg' => 'Unauthorized access attempt'
) );
}
Hope this helps.
another way that doesnt need tokens but is less secure, you got to know what you need,
is using laravels request information
if (Request::ajax())
{
//your action
}else{
//error
}
note this only works when your application always uses ajax you could even type this in your before filter and add it to all needed routes

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