I am currently working with the umbraco cms. I notice in the web.config references to session state.
My site will be on a web farm without a state server. Is umbraco reliant on session state? And if so, is it needed for content authoring or is it needed for content serving?
The front end doesn't use any session variables at all unless you code it to do so, so that should be OK for the content serving side of things.
I'm not 100% on the back office, but I THINK it's all done with cookies, rather than sessions. The easiest way to check would be to disable sessions in the web.config file and try and use the back office. If it works, you're OK, otherwise it does need the session to work for content editing.
Related
I am unable to clear cookies using watir-webdriver and browser.cookies.clear
Are there any other alternatives ?
This is as far as I know a browser based limitation, due to concerns of security and privacy.
Webdriver is interacting with the browser by javascript, and javascript is not allowed to clear all cookies (think how nasty that could be on a malicious site). In the non testing env, most JS that is executing came from the server of the site you are accessing. So the most it is allowed to do is clear the cookies for the 'current domain' e.g. the cookies belonging to the current URL. So if a web page wants to clear all its own cookies, that is OK, but it is not allowed to clear cookies belonging to other domains.
So if you want all your tests to start with fresh cookies, you will need something in the 'Before' section in env.rb that goes to the root of the site in question, and then clears the cookies
BTW the same limitation applies to setting cookies, if you want to create cookies for a specific site, you need to navigate to that site before trying to create them, or nothing gets created.
This is not an answer, but FYI only.
Suppose chrome is the chosen browser, when cucumber is running, from the output of ps -ef | grep chrome we'll be able to find the customized user data directory which is something like below.
--user-data-dir=/tmp/.org.chromium.Chromium.G2DgPo
And inside that directory, we'll be able to find the Cookies file stored under the Default folder.
Not sure directly deleting that database file could fulfill the needs or not. Cause in a normal browser session, such runtime data are stored at
~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Cookies
So I have a framework we've built on codeigniter. It uses regular codeigniter sessions by default which allows up to 4kb storage encrypted on a cookie.
Its for general apps that require a registration process, which can vary in size as questions are generated dynamically through an admin panel. Registration process relies on session data as it redirects throughout process.
I have used db_sessions in the past when I knew this would be an issue on the framework, however, I'm now considering the possibility to always have registration process using db_session and the rest of the site use the 4kb cookie session.
Is this possible. It seems like it could be a really bad idea, but I don't really want to rework the dynamic registration process or really use db_session for whole site as it will eventually make the site run very slow if too many users are online at once.
so I'm think I can just set the variable in config to be true only when the registration controller is loaded(by checking the url via $_SERVER or the uri helper if I can load it in the config which I'm guessing I cant).
Does this seem plausible?
It seems like it could be a really bad idea
You answered your own question :) You'll have issues when the user switches from one page to another. What happens if they open multiple windows, press a 'back' button etc. You'll need to switch the cookie over when they start registration, and switch it back at the end. It will be very very messy for basically no gain.
but I don't really want to rework the dynamic registration process or
really use db_session for whole site as it will eventually make the
site run very slow if too many users are online at once.
The reality is; your website has to be huge to have ANY real performance issues by using a DB for your sessions. Any if you are not using the DB, then you are relying on the cookie stored on the users computer. Depending on your site, this means they might have the ability to edit that cookie and change "admin = true" or something.
Just use the DB session - I think you are overcomplicating the situation.
I need to clear the IIS cache on my server. The exact reason is detailed below; but the reason doesn't matter. I'm 100% sure that this is the solution I need; as detailed below, I have used the process of elimination to determine that this is, indeed, the problem I'm facing, and the solution I need.
I have an MVC3 app that's themeable (skinnable architecture). Think of it as Wordpress; users can develop a theme, download it, and activate it on their site. The theme controls exactly the final HTML output. This is an over-simplification, since I provide an API with useful functions to be consumed by themes.
Anyway, users can change the theme of the site. The theme is currently stored in a static variable. When a view page is rendered, the name of the theme determines the location of the layout file (which contains references to the CSS files, etc.) and the view files. The theme is a setting that persists in the DB.
For example, if I have a theme called "Foo", then when requesting the /Admin page, I might use /Themes/Foo/Admin.cshtml. If I have another theme called "Bar" which does not have that file, then for /Admin it might request /Themes/Bar/Generic.cshtml as the layout.
The problem is that changing a theme means that every single page on the site is outdated. This means that any sites cached on IIS7 will show the old theme; this is incorrect. I need them to show the new theme.
Anyway, IIS7 uses caching by default. I need essentially a way to clear the cache when a user changes the theme. Currently, this is not happening, and users continue to see the old theme until the cache (somehow) expires itself.
I am not using output caching, or any other form of explicit caching; this is a "vanilla" ASP.NET MVC3 application from a caching perspective (i.e. I didn't add/configure any caching). IIS7 has its own default caching. I know this, because if I disable output caching in IIS7 for my Site, I will always see the correct theme after a change.
How can I flush the cache? Other SO questions point to using Cache.blah, and I tried using HttpContext.Current but that is null during tests (using VS test tool) -- because the ASP.NET pipeline is not used in full.
To explain, in an integration test, I basically:
Go to localhost/Test/
Log in (submit values into the forms)
Change the theme by browsing to the right page and clicking the right link
Request another page
See if the theme changed (based on the layout/css file name).
This is all done by code; I use a C# port of HtmlUnit, and along with deploying my app to /Test in IIS, I can essentially browse it like an end user.
Currently, this test passes around 50% of the time. The problem is that IIS is caching the results, and I can't cleanly reliably reset the cache on the server-side.
Again, I'm not talking about clearing the session or the user-side cache; IIS itself is the culprit guilty of caching my application. Nor do I want to completely disable the cache via the IIS settings, a) because I can't force people who install my application to do that, and b) because caching is good.
So how can I force flushing the cache on the server?
For example, I tried programatically touching web.config; this works, but recycles my application pool, and so, kills my static variables; every request means reloading all the static vars from the DB, which kills my performance.
As you requested I have amended this post:
You can use output cache, you say that the selected theme is stored in the database ( like settings for the site ) Well I would add another column with say a GUID and then use this as the varybycustom value.
Your global.asax file will be able to run code:
void Page_Init() {
///code here to get the GUIDforthissitestheme
var outputCacheSettings = new OutputCacheParameters() {
Duration = Int32.MaxValue, //think its maxvalue
VaryByCustom = GUIDforthissitestheme
};
InitOutputCache(outputCacheSettings);
}
At least here you will have output cache, but also every change of theme, changes the GUID so therefore changes the cache and then your page should be new.
I did something like this on a site that listed products, and when the products database was updated the key would be changed, however I can't find what site I implemented it and I work on a hell of a lot of sites.
hope this helps
Set up 'Cache Rule' in 'Output caching' feature with 'File Cache Monitoring' set to 'Using file change notification'. Then 'touch' the files theme change affects, from .net code you could do:
System.IO.File.SetLastWriteTimeUtc(fileName, DateTime.UtcNow);
The issues you are describing sound a lot like a client side caching issue. Have you checked this with a HTTP Proxy like Fiddler to verify if this is getting cached on the client?
If you are seeing HTTP 304's after a template change you may want to try configuring IIS (or your site template) to disable client side caching.
I dont think the approach mentioned for themes is correct.
If we are using STATIC variables , then it will affect all the users and all the pages.(Which is certainly not required.)
We can think of two approaches,
Use theme name in url and make it as a prat if RouteData. So the url "http://myHost/BLUE/.." will return in BLUE theme and "http://myHost/RED/.." will return in RED theme. If user will change theme then url will be updated.
The problem with above approach is next time user browse, it will load default theme.
So better approach will be save theme as a part of user preference. Once user logged in read the theme from DB and set the RouteData value.
Just touch web.config. That's the easiest and most reliable way. Flushing the application pool programmatically is overkill.
If you have a problem finding out where web.config is in a test environment (since System.Web.HttpRequest.Current is null, and similar for Server), you can always use an app.config file to point out the location.
Again, there's no other easy way to do it; even disabling output caching, as mentioned in the question, is hard to do through web.config alone.
Is there any possibility of copying a set of cookies from one domain to another. I badly need this for Web development.
You cannot just copy set of cookies, but you can write your own php/python code, to set several cookies for another domain and use values from the old set.
No, the same origin policy prohibits sites from setting or reading cookies on behalf of other sites outside of a few special cases. Some browser extensions will allow you to copy and paste cookies to sync them manually, though.
From your comments it sounds like you want to use the same cookie for your development and your production system. How about using something like 'local.example.com' instead of 'localhost' as your development domain and setting wildcard cookies for all subdomains?
We use this pattern so we don't need to register multiple API keys for webservices since most of them have wildcard support for subdomains.
I'm not sure I would recommend something like that so you are able to use the same cookies in development and production because it has other implications as well. For example if you send static assets from another subdomain then the browser will send cookie header information unnecessarily and of course there might be some more details that might make debugging harder rather than easier this way.
If you could explain the problem at hand in a bit more detail there might be other solutions or best practices for staging and production environments that can help you.
You can do this manually, using grease monkey.
goto tools->page info.
select security tab.
view cookies button.
type the domain you wish to read from.
make a note of all the cookies and their content.
now go to the domain you wish to copy to.
install greasemonkey add on for firefox (or better yet, using Cookies Manager+ :: Add-ons for Firefox!).
run some javascript code to re-create the mentioned cookeis and their values.
Is it possible to clear all site cache? I would like to do this when the user logs out or the session expires instead of instructing the browser not to cache on each request.
As far as I know, there is no way to instruct the browser to clear all the pages it has cached for your site. The only control that you, as a website author, have over caching of a page occurs when the browser tries to access that page. You can specify that cached versions of your pages should expire at a certain time using the Expires header, but even then the browser won't actually clear the page from its cache at that time.
i certainly hope not - that would give the web site destructive powers over the client machine!
If security is your main concern here, why not use HTTPS? Browsers don't cache content received via HTTPS (or cache it only in memory).
One tricky way to mimic this would be to include the session-id as a parameter when referencing any static piece of content on the site. When the user establishes the session, the browser will recognize all the pieces of content as new due to the inclusion of this parameter. For the duration of the session the browser will used the static content in its cache. After the user logs out and logs back in again, the session-id parameter for the static contents will be different, so the browser will recognize this is as completely new content and will download everything again.
That being said... this is a hack and I wouldn't recommend pursuing it.. For what reason do you want the user's cache to be cleared after their session expires? There's probably a better solution that can fit your situation as opposed to what you are currently asking for.
If you are talking about asp.net cache objects, you can use this:
For Each elem As DictionaryEntry In Cache
Cache.Remove(elem.Key)
Next
to remove items from the cache, but that may not be the full-extent of what you are trying to accomplish.