[Catalyst] process a restored request

[Matt S Trout]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 02:58:17PM -0500, catalyst at jgb.ca wrote:
> Hi,
> in my application, if a client issues a request after say 30 minutes of 
> inactivity, I want to answer his request only after successfull 
> authentication.
> 
> Ideally, I would simply serialize $c->request in the session, ask for 
> authentication, then if successfull restore the stored request to $c and call 
> $c->dispatch. But after playing around a bit, it appears not to be that 
> simple (the context is stored in the request as '_context', the body seems 
> fetched only on-demand, dispatch seems to need some prepare_* methods to be 
> called).
> 
> I searched the list and only found this proposition for a similar mechanism:
> http://lists.scsys.co.uk/pipermail/catalyst/2007-February/012256.html
> 
> Am I missing an easier way of doiing this?

Yes.

Don't try and serialize $c->req, just dump any POST data back out into
hidden fields in the login form, don't change the URL, and have the login
form processed in a forward() from auto or similar rather than doing a
detach. This is how I handle "user needs to log in to continue" across the
board and it makes life much simpler.

i.e. something like

sub auto :Private {
  my ($self, $c) = @_;
  unless ($c->user_exists) {
    unless ($c->forward('try_login')) {
      $c->detach('show_login_form');
      return 0;
    }
  }
  return 1;
}

sub try_login :Private {
  my ($self, $c) = @_;
  my $b = $c->req->body_parameters;
  return 0 unless $b->{__username};
  return $c->authenticate({
           username => $b->{__username}
           password => $b->{__password}
         });
}

-- 
      Matt S Trout       Need help with your Catalyst or DBIx::Class project?
   Technical Director                    http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/catalyst/
 Shadowcat Systems Ltd.  Want a managed development or deployment platform?
http://chainsawblues.vox.com/            http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/servers/