[Seaside] A session-aware kind of FileLibrary - how/where to start

Tue Mar 30 10:11:09 UTC 2021

Hi Sven,

I started with a WAFileLibrary subclass first. I couldn't get it to work 
the way I wanted.

One of the problems is that all FileLibraries added by addLibrary: end 
up as an endpoint in the /files path, unless I also register a 
WAFileHandler (subclass) at another endpoint. In my case, I'd like to 
separate things: /files is for "public" files, and then there should be 
/attachments for "private" stuff of my users. AFAIK there is no way to 
register an additional File Library in another path/endpoint then 
/files, or is there? (this really is a question, not an argument...). 
Why do I want that? Because I want to keep the configuration of the 
frontend web server (Apache in my case) simple. Redirecting all requests 
of /files and subdirectories to some folder is easy. Not sure whether 
redirecting all but one is just as easy...?

The other one is that a WAFileLibrary subclass doesn't know its session 
either. As an experimented I added this override to one of my FileLibraries:

handle: aRequestContext
    self session ifNotNil: [:s| s halt].
    super handle: aRequestContext

And it never halts. This makes some sense, because in order to save 
files, you don't need a session. Anybody can have these files. And that 
is what I don't want for some files...

So I started subclassing WAFileHandler and found out a FileHandler 
doesn't know the session either . But I want to have access to the 
logged-ob user in the session. So it seems I either have to subclass 
from something else or add "something" to my WAFileHandler in the 
Application configuration, like a Filter or whetever...

So either I need to know something more about FileLibraries (register at 
something else than /files, make them session aware) or FileLibrary is 
not what I  have to subclass...

Any more ideas?

Joachim

Am 30.03.21 um 11:51 schrieb Sven Van Caekenberghe:
> Hi Joachim,
>
> I would try to look at WAFileHandler, which is responsible for serving the files.
>
> It seems to delegate most work to WAFileLibrary>>#handle:
>
> Maybe you can subclass WAFileLibrary (insert your superclass before your concrete class) to check the session for a login.
>
> Sven
>
>> On 30 Mar 2021, at 11:18, jtuchel at objektfabrik.de wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> There are situations in which I feel like after 10+ years of using Seaside, I am still a newbie. (well, same for Smalltalk after 25+ years, so this may be normal).
>>
>> I would like to implement some kind of FileLibrary that is aware of the current session and only delivers files to logged-on users.
>>
>> It seems like the best starting point for this is to subclass WARequestHandler and register it with WAAdmin. So the first thing I did was implement handleFiltered: aRequestContext. Unfortunately, neither aRequestContext nor self return a WASession, although I entered _s and _k form a logged in session into the address bar of my Browser. This may be a naive approach, but as a fist test case this seemed like a good idea ;-)
>>
>> Now the question I ask myself is: how do I teach my WARequestHandler subclass the trick of knowing/finding the current session. Do I add some Filter? Is subclassing WARequestHandler the wrong idea anyways? (I started my experiments with a subclass of WAFileLibrary, but that also didn't get me anywhere...).
>>
>> I am not asking for a ready-made solution. I'd rather try to understand a little more about Seasides innards here...
>>
>> Any pointers? Kick-off ideas what to look at?
>>
>>
>> tia,
>>
>>
>> Joachim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel          mailto:jtuchel at objektfabrik.de
>> Fliederweg 1                         http://www.objektfabrik.de
>> D-71640 Ludwigsburg                  http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com
>> Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0         Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1
>>
>>
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-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Objektfabrik Joachim Tuchel          mailto:jtuchel at objektfabrik.de
Fliederweg 1                         http://www.objektfabrik.de
D-71640 Ludwigsburg                  http://joachimtuchel.wordpress.com
Telefon: +49 7141 56 10 86 0         Fax: +49 7141 56 10 86 1

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