Unable to access ExpressJS route via href link - node.js

I'm not sure if this is a security feature or if I'm missing something obvious. I need to access one of my ExpressJS routes directly via a standard link on the page.
If I type the URL in to my browser location bar, I get the desired result. However, if I put that exact URL in a standard link on one of the pages on the site, the route never gets hit.
EDIT: Even if I pull this out of the router and add directly to app.js I get the same results. I'm simply trying to use Passport's Facebook authentication. The first route looks like this:
router.get('/login/facebook', function(req, res, next) {
passport.authenticate('facebook')(req, res, next);
});
I realize the req function wrapper is not needed, I was using it for debugging so I could see when the route gets called.
If I set a breakpoint there, it works fine if I just type the "/api/login/facebook" URL into my browser, but if I put the exact URL in a link on the page, the route never gets hit.

It turns out this was caused by Angular's routing mechanism intercepting the links. I found the solution here:
How to get Angular UI Router to respect "non-routed" URLs

Related

Setting up Swagger Ui in Firebase Functions Server

I've developed an API on Firebase Cloud Functions and I want to include a docs path to it.
I'm using swagger and I could successfully test it locally (localhost:PORT/docs) but when I deploy the function to Firebase it's not working, it redirects me to an authorization page.
I think I figured out why this is:
Let's say the name of my Cloud function is cfunc. Then the base url for it is something like https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/cfunc. Based on how I included the swagger documentation:
const swaggerDoc = require('./docs/swagger.config.json')
app.use(
'/docs',
allowCors,
swaggerUi.serve,
swaggerUi.setup(swaggerDoc, {
customCssUrl: '/assets/swagger.css',
customSiteTitle: 'My Function Title',
customfavIcon: '/assets/logo.ico',
swaggerOptions: {
supportedSubmitMethods: [] //to disable the "Try it out" button
}
})
)
the docs should be located at https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/cfunc/docs. When I try to access that URL, watching "Network" in my browser DevTools, it attempts a GET at that URL with response 304 and then redirects to https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/docs and that's what brings up the Google Authentication page, since there's no Cloud Function named "docs" so Google thinks I'm trying to access something else in Firebase Cloud Functions (the same thing happens if I do something like https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/tomato)
But I still don't know how to fix this redirect or why it's happening. I tried adding the Cloud Function URL to the host parameter of the swagger.config.json file, and some modifications to CORS, like allowing more Request Methods, adding json as content type, allowing authentication on headers, but nothing seems to be working.
Hope I was clear enought, if not tell me any other info you need (it's one of my first posts here :B)
Found the SOLUTION
After testing a BUNCH of different things, I found out that the redirection was in fact happening always removing one slice of the path after, for example I changed the docs endpoint to '/something/docs' and when accessing the URL that would be https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/cfunc/something/docs it redirected to https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/cfunc/docs which did not bring up the Google Authentication thing but now wasn't a valid path for my docs so it returned a 'Cannot GET /cfunc/docs'.
For some reason this redirection DOES NOT happen if you add an extra forward slash ('/') at the end of the documentation URL. So, in the first case, where the endpoint for the documentation is only '/docs', accessing the URL https://region-name-project-name.cloudfunctions.net/cfunc/docs/ does it. I do not know why that is, I'm probably posting an Issue on the swagger repo, but if someone has some extra data on why or how to make it work otherwise it would be awesome to hear.
Hope this helps someone else!
EDIT:
Oh and another thing I forgot, it's apparently better if you setup swagger-ui as if you were using express Router, even if you are not (maybe Firebase loads the Cloud Function with something like a router), so instead of app.use('/docs', swagger-ui.serve, swagger-ui.setup(swagger-file)) do app.use('/docs', swagger-ui.serve) and then app.get('/docs', swagger-ui.setup(swagger-file))

Expose routes on different domains

I am struggling with something that doesn't look that hard : let's say I have 2 urls to access my server :
http://localhost:80/
and an external url
http://domain.com/internal/
Is there a way to do add a basepath internal if the forwarded host is equal to the external url host?
Something like :
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
if (req.headers['x-forwarded-host'] === 'domain.com') {
app.use('/internal', routes);
} else {
next();
}
})
There wont be any direct method as in a shortcut to work your way around for personal use cases.
I suggest this simple method though. Let's take example of app.get('/xyz') route.
This can be accessed locally via http://locahost:80/xyz or yourdomain.com/xyz via any application not hosted locally (Unless you make a call using your domainname in your own application).
Add a header element with every request when the call is internal.
Now, whenever our/xyz route is called check for that header element using a if condition and if the request is made internally you'll have that header element there and then you can simply use either res.redirect or any other method that you find useful (Exporting function in current route or anything else you find easy and needful).

SEO for dynamically generated content in SPA (single page application) using node.js + express.js on server side

My client side code is a single page app (written in knockout.js) with its own routing system so when google crawler bot will try to access links (that have nothing to do with requesting new page from back end BUT just a part of client side routing) it will ask server (node.js + express.js) to serve page (for example 'mywebsite/about') and of course server will return 404 because it unawares of client routing system. Here is my current server code:
router.get('*', function(req, res, next) {
res.sendFile(path.resolve('../dist/index.html'));
});
My idea is to define the same routing structure as in a client and pass routs for client routing system in search parameter:
router.get('/about', function(req, res, next) {
res.sendFile(path.resolve('../dist/index.html?tab=about'));
});
then in client side I can catch it in javascript and pick correct route.
Here off course I have another problem - as I understand google bot doesn't run javascript.. but here I can use prerender.io middleware I guess.
1) Is it a right way to go with single page apps with generated content and SEO?
2) How to pass search parameter from express.js?
If you have query strings that Googlebot can use to recall consistent content then you can indicate this in Webmaster:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6080548?rd=1
Here's an example set up of mine:
Google wants to only index pages that have consistent content. If content varies for each user - then you want to set a rel="canonical" tag on each page indicating where the 'start' would be for this dynamically generated content.
The idea would be to adapt the Webmaster to your app rather than the other way around. Trying to 'trick' the bot can have dire consequences in SEO because Google does have human checkers that occasionally rate domains. If they find inconsistency between the search indexed URL and what they see in their browser, you'll earn a flag from a lazy operator. Here is the handbook operators follow.
Use prerender.io as first middleware of your pipe:
app.use(require('prerender-node').set('prerenderToken', 'YOUR_TOKEN'));
app.get('*', (req, res) => res.render('index.html'));

Express wont match url to route when coming from remote server

I'm setting up a site that posts to a remote server. The user performs some steps on this remote server and when the user is done. The server issues a get request with a bunch of query parameters to my server.
The thing is that this request never arrives at the controller method it is supposed to.
I have a custom middleware that intercepts all requests and i am doing some logging in there, i can see there every time this request arrives to my server but express doesn't seem to match it to the controller.
However if i go into my browser and do the request from there with the exact same path and query string it works fine.
I thought maybe the remote server was using a proxy so i enabled trust proxy in express but that didn't make any difference.
I have tried changing the route path and that didn't make a difference.
I don't know what code would be helpful since it is pretty standard express code. I have tried putting the route before all the middleware and the request still bypassed the controller and was logged by my logging middleware.
I'm completely baffled, anyone got any idea what could be causing this?
EDIT:
Here is some of the code I'm using. This is not the exact setup I'm trying but I have tried to make it work this way to rule out my routing logic and this example has the exact same problem. I tried putting the app.get above the middleware and the request from the external server still bypassed the app.get and went directly to the middleware.
app.use(function(req, res, next) {
console.log('path', req.method, req.path, req.query);
});
app.get('/payments/success', function (req, res) {
console.log('SUCCESS', req.query);
res.status(200).send();
});
Here is the result of the middleware logging a request arriving from the remote server(i removed the variables logged from the request query because it is sensitive information, they are returned just the way they are supposed to):
path GET /payment/success {
variable: 'variable",
}
If anyone needs any more information from the request object i will provide it.

NodeJS - Not being able to access the route I want

I'm having some troubles getting to a route I got. The route works on http://localhost:3000/me and shows info but on http://localhost:3000/!#/me it doenst show anything. The purpose of said route is to show the logged persons' profile.
On my server routes I got:
app.get('/me', users.me);
The users.me function is as follows:
exports.me = function(req, res) {
res.jsonp(req.user);
};
The console states it expected a object and got an array, I can understand that since I'm getting a json, but how can I send the own user back to the front-end so it shows his/her profile?
Edit: I managed to solve my problem, since I use passportjs I can get the user id from the session. Since I already had a route for a user by id, I simply had to redirect to said route. Like this: req.redirect('users/'+ req.session.passport.user);. Since I already had a /users/:userId route working it completely solved my issue.
Edit2: Apparently there are several ways to get the user id. Try to console.log the request and you will see what I mean :)
/me and /!#/me are not the same route . The later won't match get('
/me',..)
the hash fragment #/me will not send to the server, you cannot capture that by server side routers(without force the page refresh by client code). But you can manage that by client-code.

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