Accessing a module's action rendered output - yii

I'm writing an "Account" module which should take care of everything about accounts: registration, login/logout, user administration, password recovery, account activation, etc.
So I thought it would be best to reuse whatever the module's DefaultController::actionRegister() generates to show on the main page.
So my question is: how to create a new "sub request" (similar to CController::forward()) from any controller (either SiteController, read: from views/layouts/main.php, or another controller, eventually of another submodule) to a given module/controller/action?
I've tried with $this->forward() from within my application layout without success: it shows a blank page, no error whatsoever.
Thanks

You are trying to make a widget. Avoiding tightly coupled classes and actions will make your application more secure, easier to maintain and improve and far more reusable.
"Inline partial redirects" are never the answers to any question, at least in Yii.

Related

Need to make certain components only view access based on new role?

In the app I'm working on it's a fairly big codebase and components/pages are sometimes based on user roles. Admins will be able to see certain buttons or sections while regular users are not.
I need to modify a lot of the existing pages/components to accommodate a new role that's being added, which is view-only-admin.
This role will only be able to see everything including calendars, tasks, etc. but they are not allowed to make any sort of updates.
It would be a tremendous amount of work to go through the template of each component and file and look for v-if admin and also add a view-only-admin as well as make every single button or submit/click method behave differently for a view-only-admin role.
What would be the best way to handle this for the entire app? Re-writing and modifying v-if and submit methods seem like a bad use of time.
I've only been working with Vue/Nuxt for a few months, but I have read Mixins are pieces of code that you can reuse.
Would it be possible to write a mixin so that if the role is "view-only-admin" and there's an action that is a put/Post call, then they are not able to perform those API calls and presented with an error message?
I'm not sure how to go about properly implementing this feature. If I am able to stop all PUT/POST calls using a mixin, it would just redirect to a 404 right?
Thoughts?
If you are using axios for POST/PUT methods, then you should definitely check Interceptors.
But if you add only an interceptors without UI updates - your users may be confused why some buttons exist but doesn't work as expected.

Page & Action wise Authorization Asp.Net Core Razor Pages

I have a requirement to configure the user's authorization per module per screen per action. For example, one user should be able to Create/Save WorkOrders in WorkOrder Module, but another user should only able to View/Delete WorkOrders. Similarly, a third user should only be able to View WorkOrders. This is an example of one screen. Now there are many screens in the application. Let's keep the actions same for all i.e. View, New, Update, Delete.
There is a reports module also, in which the user will create reports on the fly and add it into the application. So authorization is required here too. For example, a user can View/Print WorkOrder reports. But another user can only view reports. Let's keep the actions in reports only View & Print.
I am not sure Asp.Net Core built-in authorization is capable of this or not. What I have looked so far, it is not possible. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Now question is, how should I do this? I had a similar kind of requirement in a previously built application where I used database tables to store rights against each user and each screen. And upon log-in, I used to fetch that data, and then while loading the web page; I used to show or hide the relevant buttons & menus based on user's rights. But here in Asp.Net Razor Pages, the action method matters (If I'm not wrong), and certain functionality can be accessed via route. I am looking for some attribute-based solution.
I found this link with more or less above mentioned implementation using database tables and route URL to determine action name. So the URLs are saved in the database and on runtime they are checked and matched with the current URL and the user is authenticated.
Another link here, where the developer has used attribute-based filtering on action methods. But URL Routes are not being saved in the database or anywhere.
Are these the only & best solution to my problem? I have no problem implementing them, they look logical. But I just want to use the best available approach. Can anyone assist me with any other more suitable approach?

ASP.NET MVC - check Facebook login status

This is more of a design question.
I figured out how to use the facebook login via the Facebook SDK c#.
QUESTION: What is the best way to check whether the user is logged into FB or not each time the user goes to a different page?
Back on ASP.NET webforms, I could simply put in code to check FB login status in the code behind of a master page. This was good ... once and done. But I don't understand how to implement something similar in Asp.Net MVC 4.0.
Given that the _Layout.cshtml file (which acts like a master page) is only a view (hence, no code behind), what is the best way to code a way to check if the user is logged into FB each time a user goes to a different web page? Because I would think, adding this bit of code to each controller can't be the optimal design solution.
The only solution that I can think of involves using Javascript on the client side to do a WebApi call ... I guess the script will be bundled with all the other scripts so that it runs on each page. But I was hoping to find a solution on the server side ...
I'm pretty new to MVC, learning things as I go along ... tips appreciated ... thanks!
I can think of a couple of points that might help you devise a solution.
You can put code in your _Layout, but I agree that you want to be careful about doing so. You could create a helper or partial view and have your _Layout call it so that it's executed for every action. Your helper/partial would need to execute the required logic and then return something. The problem that I have with this is it's a lot of overhead every request.
You could do an AJAX call after the page is loaded (as you suggested). This means that the page still loads quickly. The problem I have with this is that you're now dependant on Javascript. It's also potentially a little hacky(?)
What about storing the user's status (logged on/off) in a session/cookie and also providing a 5 minute expiry. You can use the Helper/Partial method from before or have some logic fire in OnActionExecuting (or similar). Your logic should check to see if the status has expired and then connect to the Facebook API to update the status. This has the advantage of low overhead (i.e. not checking again until 5 minutes has passed).
I don't know of your exact situation so I can't say what method, if any, is best.

Yii: maximizing code reuse with per-user site configurations

The client I'm working for has a CMS written in Yii. Currently a part of their business is customizing the CMS to meet the specific needs of each customer. About 90% of the code is reused, essentially by copying and pasting from one directory to another. While I've been working on this project, I've had to merge changes in to the shared codebase several times.
All, or most, of these sites are hosted on the same server, and it would seem that it would make more sense to have a single login, that changed what features we showed based on the login. In some case that means overriding whole or partial views (eg, the _form.php might change from customer to customer) including the controller and model. Most of the time, it means adding a new controller for a bit of functionality written just for that client.
I've read about having both a front and backend site here: http://www.yiiframework.com/wiki/63/organize-directories-for-applications-with-front-end-and-back-end-using-webapplicationend-behavior but that doesn't seem to be the right fit (I don't want everyone coming to a different start php file, for instance)
Ideally, I'd have users log in, and get assigned a site id, which will filter data in the shared MVC objects, and will add in the ones specifically for them, or override the ones where necessary
Intuitively it seems like something like this would make sense:
Shared controllers go here:
/protected/controllers
Overrides and additions for client1 go here:
/protected/controllers/client1
or:
/protected/client1/controllers
But I'm not sure how to get Yii to do this in the most efficient and easy to manage way. Is this something that's going to work with Yii, or am I breaking it in ways unintended? If it will work, what's the best way to accomplish it so that it's clear to me six months from now, or some random developer who replaces me?
Do you know RBAM ?
With Role Based access you can profile your application in more-or-less granular way

Need help fitting a design flow into REST

I'm having a bit of a trouble understanding how to fit a particular design flow I have into a proper REST architecture. Let me explain the flow:
I'm creating technical support website where users can submit ProblemRequests. On the front page, the user selects all the categories he's having trouble with and clicks "get help," which then redirects him to the next page where he fills out some forms to submit his request. Here are the pages:
Page 1 - Select Problem Categories
Page 2 - Fill out Problem Request
Page 2 basically acts like the NEW action for a ProblemRequest. The thing is each ProblemRequest depends on multiple ProblemCategories, so a nested route isn't going to work here. The next thing that comes to mind is sending in all relevant ProblemCategories ids as an GET param for the NEW ProblemRequest action, but I would rather not expose the IDs in the URL.
A Multi-Part form sort of comes to mind, but that involves making ProblemRequests have state, where some would be complete and others incomplete. I don't want to deal with the implications, because in reality this is a one page submission, not a very long-winded process.
What would work ideally is to override the NEW action for the ProblemRequests controller to respond to POST operations, but I don't know if this is considered bad programming practice. Is this a cardinal sin? Is it okay for me to change the NEW action to respond to POST instead of GET?
Please advise,
Thanks in advance.
Keep it simple. Is there any reason for the round-trip to the server? I'd just make the two "pages" a single page and maintain the state of the selected categories client-side.
Use a multi-step form: http://railscasts.com/episodes/217-multistep-forms
You can save the IDs in the session, and the model won't get saved in the DB until you are finished filling out the info. Works great for simple 2 or 3 step forms.
For more complex wizards you could use a gem like https://github.com/schneems/wicked