Our apps are using client variables management for unique identify a website visitor and eventually store it as the ID of an e-commerce order, for example.
Our customer orders table saves strings like "10000032:98517605:77134665" (cfid+cftoken) as its unique ID.
Now we need to get rid of client variables, so no more "CLIENT.cfid" in our code.
First thing that comes up to my mind is to simply replace that with "SESSION.cfid" and "SESSION.cftoken". But the big doubt is:
Will the generated id and token still be univoque against the existing ones?
Is it possible that making such a change will result in having "10000032:98517605:77134665" re-generated?
How can I make unique visitor ids, considering existing ones too?
I would set a new session value onSessionStart that you can guarantee would be unique. So in the onSessionStart method of Application.cfc, you can set something like:
<cfset Session.CustomerID = CreateUUID() />
With that, when the session begins, a UUID (guaranteed to be unique) will be put into the session scope. You can then use that for whatever you need. If this needs to be persistent, you could write it out to a cookie as well (since sessions don't persist long term like Client variables do).
Related
I have 2 search-pages and 1 result-page.
The result-list on the result-page is a list of URLs.
The URLs are dependent of the search-page, so if the user comes from search-page1 he gets a different URL to the user who comes from search-page2.
So on the result-page I have to know from which search-page the user comes.
First I tried it with UrlRefferer, but if the result-list has too many results, I use paging and if the user clicks on the second result-list I loose the UrlReferrer...
What is the best way to do this? To use Session or better use a query parameter in the URL?
If I understood your question, this is only for a single request. So better you can pass as a request parameter. Session will unnecessary hold the value for the whole pages which is not appropriate. And unless you update the value in session parameter, it will keep hold the old value only.
Is it possible for you to hold the value in a script variable?
IMHO session is a simpler solution, so you doesn't have to set query parameters every time user change page.
As I understand, to update any object with couchdb. I have to send the whole object back since it is actually "inserting" a new revision for the same id. This is all neat and works quite well.
But then I have a problem, I'm not so sure how should I handle that. I have an object that can't be sent to my user completely. I have to hide certain informations such as password hash.
The data is sent to the client, the revision is sent too. Now when I try to update my object I have one problem. Since some data is missing, the update will erase the attributes that are missing from my user.
That said, the easiest way I have is to get the object from couchdb, check if id and rev matches. If it does match, merge the object with the missing attributes. It will work pretty well and I can support deleting attributes too.
Then using this technique, I could add my objects to a cache that will reduce the time to query frequent objects from the database. If the object can be updated, then clear the cache for that id. If the object is newer, then I'll have to handle the error or merge the object.
Is there any better "good way" to handle this problem?
edit
After thinking about it during the night, I think I found a much much better solution. Instead of having my username and password inside my profile. I'll separate the identification object from the use profile.
In other words, I'll have to split up the object as much as possible to keep things isolated... On the plus side, I can add multiple authentication for one profile without messing with the profile itself. I can return profiles and anything necessary without returning any secret object.
It will complicate a bit the logic of insertion but it should be quite easy...
Get 1 id from couchdb using the uuid api "_uuids"
Insert password authentications (username, password, profile_id) using that uuid
If succeed, insert profile using the uuid that we got at 1
If anything wrong happen, rollback and tell the users what's wrong.
Also the nice thing about this method is that I can add access_token for oauth2 using the profile id and the logic will be almost the same as password, the auth type will differ but any auth type should work almost the same.
Yeah, extracting the secret stuff from the profile documents sounds like the way to go.
In order to use some AJAX calls, we use often some input type="hidden". But these values can be easily changed. So, is it a builtin rails feature than permit to send date to AJAX, withouth being usable by user, or than can't be changed by user ?
In my current rails apps, i'm using filters for discard all malicious actions on my controllers. I am not building a public API, so i don't really need more powerful checks.
But for examples, i have an apotomo widget displaying some data, using some input hidden. But if you change it, you can access to another data set. In my case, it's not really an issue, cause all these users have the right to access these data sets anyway.
But is it some manner to give datas to ajax call, in a secure way ? Or the only security, is about rights management ?
All input that comes from the user is insecure as you do not have control over it! Users even do not need a webbrowser but can use some other program (like curl or wget) to send manipulated data.
As you state, using a whitelist (not a blacklist as you can never be sure of all bad, but of all good!) is a good way to start.
To make sure the hidden fields have not been changed you can use some kind of checksum that is calculated on server side using a fixed secret. This secret must never be exposed to your visitors!
hash = md5(field_1 + field_2 + field_3 + my_secret)
When these four hidden fields (field_1..3, hash) arrive in your form you can recalculate the hash and compare it with the params[:hash] in order to be sure the field_1 to field_3 have not been changed.
I have two tables, users and tokens.
Each user have a activated field and each token have the {id, token, user_id, created} fields.
The way the app should work is:
On the creation, the app will -
make sure that the activated field is empty (to avoid manipulations to the submitted data).
a token will be created in the tokens table.
On update, the app will -
NOT create a new token.
NOT allow an update of any kind to the activated field.
check if a new email has been submitted, and if so: will create a new token and set the activated field to false.
I know how to activate the account through the controller and how to setup the router for that.
What I need is mainly the model configuration.
For example:
I think that the token creation should be done in the afterSave method, so - how do I determine if the method is called by an update or by a create operation?
Thanks for any help
yossi you can also specify the fields that should be saved from the form though - a whitelist of fields it is ok to save in you $this->save() call. That way you can stop a hacker passing an ID in the request, and you should just set it in the controller yourself then with $this->Token->id = whatever you have, I would personally use saveField ('activated) in conjunction with this (just saves a single field!). Fat models is best if you can but get it working first then refactor it if you have got stuck. Better than wasting lots of time writing perfect first time.
You question is unclear. If you have a default value for a field, then why not set it in the database rather than doing something in aftersave? If you need to do something that should be done only in certain circumstances, then write a custom method in your model to perform the tasks you want either on creation or update.
Edit
So, if your record has an id, then you know it exists in the database. So, the simple thing to do is (in any method) check to see if the model has an id field and that it is not empty. If it's empty, then you know that you are creating a record and you can do x task. If it isn't, then do y task.
if(isset($modelData['ModelName']['id']) && !empty($modelData['ModelName']['id'])){
//This is an update
} else {
//This is a new record
}
I am working on a guess-a-number game with Ruby that will be online. I know I need to pass the SESSION somehow to keep the number that they are guessing, but I have tried a ton of methods with no luck. My code is here.
Any thoughts on what I can do get this code working? I have declared each of my sections.
A session is, usually, a combination of a cookie (session cookie), or some session id tacked onto the url, which has some unique identification of the current "session" and a way to save the data on the server and retrieve it when given the id from the cookie.
So I would set a cookie based on for example ip + Time.now.to_i and then save that ID and the values I want set into a database or a text file on the hard drive. Note that there is probably a lot better ways to create a unique ID but aim for the simple stuff first. :)
I also recommend that you look into CGI::Session which you require with require 'cgi/session'.