package Apache2::Controller::Session; =head1 NAME Apache2::Controller::Session - Apache2::Controller with Apache::Session =head1 VERSION Version 1.000.100 =cut use version; our $VERSION = version->new('1.000.100'); =head1 SYNOPSIS Set your A2C session subclass as a C. This example assumes use of L. # get configuration directives: PerlLoadModule Apache2::Controller::Directives # cookies will get path => /somewhere SetHandler modperl # see Apache2::Controller::Dispatch for dispatch subclass info PerlInitHandler MyApp::Dispatch # see Apache2::Controller::DBI::Connector for database directives A2C_Session_Cookie_Opts name myapp_sessid A2C_Session_Class Apache::Session::MySQL A2C_Session_Secret jfa803m8cma083ak803kjf9-32 PerlHeaderParserHandler Apache2::Controller::DBI::Connector MyApp::Session In controllers, tied session hash is C<< $r->pnotes->{a2c}{session} >>. In this example above, you implement C in your session subclass to return the options hashref to C for L. If you do not implement get_options(), it will try to create directories to use Apache::Session::File using C<< /tmp/a2c_sessions// >> and C<< /var/lock/a2c_sessions/ >> =head1 DESCRIPTION This is a module to make an L store available to methods in your controllers. It is not just a session id - if you just need a tracking mechanism or a way to store data in cookies, you should roll your own handler with L. Your session module uses an Apache2::Controller::Session tracker module as a base and you specify your L options either as config variables or by implementing a method C<>. Instead of having a bunch of different options for all the different L types, it's easier for me to make you provide a method C in your subclass that will return a has of the appropriate options for your chosen session store. =head2 CONFIG ALTERNATIVE 1: directives or PerlSetVar variables If you do not implement a special C method or use settings other than these, these are the default: PerlHeaderParserHandler MyApp::ApacheSessionFile A2C_Session_Class Apache::Session::File A2C_Session_Opts Directory /tmp/sessions A2C_Session_Opts LockDirectory /var/lock/sessions Until directives work and the kludgey PerlSetVar syntax goes away, spaces are not allowed in the argument values. Warning! The kludgey PerlSetVar syntax will go away when directives work properly. =head2 CONFIG ALTERNATIVE 2: C<< YourApp::YourSessionClass->get_options() >> Implement C in your subclass to return the final options hashref for your L session type. For example, if your app uses DBIx::Class, maybe you want to go ahead and init your schema so you can get the database handle directly and pass that to your session class. See L for directives to set database connection in pnotes->{a2c}{dbh}. Here's a code example for Location /somewhere above: package MyApp::Session; use strict; use warnings FATAL => 'all'; use base qw( Apache2::Controller::Session::Cookie ); use English '-no_match_vars'; use Apache2::Controller::X; sub get_options { my ($self) = @_; my $r = $self->{r}; eval { $r->pnotes->{a2c}{dbh} ||= DBI->connect( 'dbi:mysql:database=myapp;host=mydbhost'; 'myuser', 'mypassword' ); }; a2cx "cannot connect to DB: $EVAL_ERROR" if $EVAL_ERROR; my $dbh = $r->pnotes->{a2c}{dbh}; # save handle for later use # in controllers, etc. return { Handle => $dbh, LockHandle => $dbh, }; } If you do it this way or use Apache::DBI, be careful about transactions. See L below. # ... In your controller module, access the session in C<< pnotes->{a2c}{session} >>. package MyApp::Controller::SomeWhere::Overtherainbow; use base qw( Apache2::Controller Apache2::Request ); # ... sub default { my ($self) = @_; my $session = $self->pnotes->{a2c}{session}; $session->{foo} = 'bar'; # session will be saved by a PerlLogHandler # that was automatically pushed by Apache2::Controller::Session # and in my example return Apache2::Const::HTTP_OK; } =head1 DATABASE TRANSACTION SAFETY When this handler runs, it ties the session into a special hash that it keeps internally, and loads a copy into C<< $r->pnotes->{a2c}{session} >>. So, modifying the session hash is fine, as long as you do not dereference it, or as long as you save your changes back to C<< $r->pnotes->{a2c}{session} >>. No changes are auto-committed. The one in pnotes is copied back into the tied session hash in a C, after the server finishes output but I it closes the connection to the client. If the connection is detected to be aborted in the C phase, changes are NOT saved into the session object. If you implemented C as per above and decided to save your $dbh for later use in your controllers, feel free to start transactions and use them normally. Just make sure you use L correctly and roll back or commit your transactions. If you decide to push a C to roll back transactions for broken connections or something, or C to do something else (don't use post-connection phases for database transactions or you'll get out of sync), be aware that this handler 'unshifts' a log handler closure that saves the copy in pnotes back into the tied hash. It does this by re-ordering the C stack with L and C. So if you push another post-response handler that wants to choose whether to save the session or not, be aware that it may not work as you expect unless you re-order that phase's handler stack again. =head1 TO SAVE OR NOT TO SAVE Generally in your code, it's complicated to decide whether everything has worked before you save anything to the session. It's easier just to save stuff, and then if something goes wrong, it is as if this rolls back. A C subroutine is 'unshifted' to the request stack which decides whether to save changes to the session. By default, it saves changes only if A) the connection is not aborted, and B) your controller set HTTP status < 300, i.e. it returned C (0), one of the C family (100+) or one of the C family (200+). So for an C, or throwing an exception, redirecting, forbidding access, etc (>= 300), it normally would not save changes. If your L controller module returns one of these non-OK statuses, but you want to force the saving of the session contents, set C<< $self->pnotes->{a2c}{session_force_save} = 1 >> before your response phase controller returns a status to L. If the connection is aborted mid-way (i.e. the pipe was broken due to a network failure or the user clicked 'stop' in the browser), then the session will not be saved, whether you set the force save flag or not. (If this is not useful and correct behavior contact me and I will add another switch, but it seems right to me.) It actually re-orders the C stack so that its handlers run first, before the handler pushed by L commits the database transaction, for example. This used to push a C to save the session, which made sense at the time, but the OpenID auth tests revealed that the Cleanup handler is apparently assigned a thread to process it independently, even under prefork with C. So, the test script was firing off a new request before the old request Cleanup handler ran to save the session, which resulted in sporadic and inconsistent failures... yeah, THOSE kind, you know the type, the most maddening ones. Apache::Session does not always save automatically, for example if you change something in the bottom tier of a multi-level hash. If you want to, set the directive flag C and this will set a top-level timestamp C<< $r->pnotes->{a2c}{session}{a2c_timestamp} >> on the way out to trigger L to save everything. But if you are potentially accessing the session contents without setting it every time, you should just set a top-level timestamp manually to indicate to L that you want things saved at the end of every request, but this may slow you down on a busy site, so it is not the default. See L and L. =head1 IMPLEMENTING TRACKER SUBCLASSES See L for how to implement a custom tracker subclass. This implements C<$sid = get_session_id()> which gets a session id from a cookie, and C which sets the session id in the cookie. Perhaps some custom tracker subclass would implement C to get the session_id out of the request query params, and C would push a C to post-process all other handler output and append the session id param onto any url links that refer to our site. That would be cool... release your own plug-in. If you wanted to do it with combined cookies and url params in this way you could overload C and C, etc. etc. =head1 ERRORS C<> will throw an error exception if the session setup encounters an error. =head1 METHODS =cut use strict; use warnings FATAL => 'all'; use English '-no_match_vars'; use base qw( Apache2::Controller::NonResponseBase Apache2::Controller::Methods ); use YAML::Syck; use Log::Log4perl qw(:easy); use File::Spec; use Digest::SHA qw( sha224_base64 ); use Apache2::Const -compile => qw( OK ); use Apache2::RequestUtil (); use Apache2::Controller::X; use Apache2::Controller::Const qw( $DEFAULT_SESSION_SECRET ); =head2 process The C method attaches or creates a session, and pushes a PerlLogHandler closure to save the session after the end of the request. It sets the session id cookie with an expiration that you set in your subclass as C in a format that is passed to Apache2::Cookie. (i.e. '3M', '2D', etc.) Don't set that if you want them to expire at the end of the browser session. =cut my %used; # i feel used! sub process { my ($self) = @_; my $r = $self->{r}; my $session_id = $self->get_session_id(); DEBUG "processing session: ".($session_id ? $session_id : '[new session]'); my $directives = $self->get_directives(); my $class = $directives->{A2C_Session_Class} || 'Apache::Session::File'; DEBUG "using session class $class"; do { eval "use $class;"; a2cx $EVAL_ERROR if $EVAL_ERROR; $used{$class} = 1; } if !exists $used{$class}; my $options = $self->get_options(); DEBUG sub{"Creating session with options:\n".Dump($options)}; my %tied_session = (); my $tieobj = undef; eval { tie %tied_session, $class, $session_id, $options; DEBUG 'Finished tie.'; $tieobj = tied(%tied_session); DEBUG sub { 'Session is '.($tieobj ? 'tied' : 'not tied').", contents:" .Dump(\%tied_session); }; }; a2cx $EVAL_ERROR if $EVAL_ERROR; a2cx "no session_id" if !$tied_session{_session_id}; a2cx "no tied obj" if !defined $tieobj; a2cx "session_id mismatch" if defined $session_id && $session_id ne $tied_session{_session_id}; # set the session id in the tracker, however that works $session_id ||= $tied_session{_session_id}; DEBUG sub { "session_id is ".(defined $session_id ? "'$session_id'" : '[undef]') }; $self->set_session_id($session_id); my %session_copy = (%tied_session); $r->pnotes->{a2c}{session} = \%session_copy; $r->pnotes->{a2c}{_tied_session} = \%tied_session; DEBUG "ref of real tied_session is '".\%tied_session."'"; # set state detection handler as the first handler in # the last phase that connection is open my @log_handlers = qw( Apache2::Controller::Log::DetectAbortedConnection Apache2::Controller::Log::SessionSave ); # we reset the whole PerlLogHandler stack to make sure session # gets saved before the database commit happens... lame! push @log_handlers, @{ $r->get_handlers('PerlLogHandler') || [] }; DEBUG sub {"reordering the PerlLogHandler stack:\n".Dump(\@log_handlers)}; $r->set_handlers(PerlLogHandler => \@log_handlers); DEBUG "returning OK"; return Apache2::Const::OK; } =head2 signature my $signature_string = $self->signature($session_id); Return the string which is the signature of the session id plus the secret. Override this in a subclass if you want to use something other than SHA224. See L. The secret is the value associated with the directive A2C_Session_Secret, or the default if that directive was not used. See L, L, L. =cut sub signature { my ($self, $sid) = @_; a2cx "no sid param" if !defined $sid; my $secret = $self->{secret} ||= $self->get_directive('A2C_Session_Secret') || $DEFAULT_SESSION_SECRET; my $sig = sha224_base64( $sid . $secret ); DEBUG sub { Dump({ sid => $sid, secret => $secret, sig => $sig, })}; return sha224_base64( $sid . $secret ); } =head2 get_options If you do not configure C<> or override the subroutine, the default C method assumes default Apache2::Session::File. Default settings try to create C<> and C<>. (uses C<tmpdir>>, so it should work on Windoze?). If you want to do something differently, use your own settings or overload C. =cut my %created_temp_dirs; sub get_options { my ($self) = @_; my $opts = $self->get_directive('A2C_Session_Opts'); if (!$opts) { my $hostname = $self->{r}->hostname(); my $tmp = File::Spec->tmpdir(); my $dir = File::Spec->catfile($tmp, 'A2C', $hostname); my $sess = File::Spec->catfile($dir, 'sess'); my $lock = File::Spec->catfile($dir, 'lock'); if (!exists $created_temp_dirs{$hostname}) { do { mkdir || a2cx "Cannot create $_: $OS_ERROR" } for grep !-d, $dir, $sess, $lock; $created_temp_dirs{$hostname} = 1; } $opts = { Directory => $sess, LockDirectory => $lock, }; } DEBUG "returning session opts:\n".Dump($opts); return $opts; } =head1 DIRECTIVES Apache2 configuration directives. L =over 4 =item A2C_Session_Class =item A2C_Session_Opts =back =head1 SEE ALSO L L L L =head1 THANKS Thanks to David Ihern for edumacating me about the proper session cookie signature algorithm. =head1 AUTHOR Mark Hedges, C<< >> =head1 COPYRIGHT & LICENSE Copyright 2008 Mark Hedges, all rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. This software is provided as-is, with no warranty and no guarantee of fitness for any particular purpose. =cut 1;