How can I pass along auditing information between clients and services in an easy way without having to add that information as arguments for all service methods? Can I use message headers to set this data for a call?
Is there a way to allow service to pass that along downstream also, i.e., if ServiceA calls ServiceB that calls ServiceC, could the same auditing information be send to first A, then in A's call to B and then in B's call to C?
There is actually a concept of headers that are passed between client and service if you are using fabric transport for remoting. If you are using Http transport then you have headers there just as you would with any http request.
Note, below proposal is not the easiest solution, but it solves the issue once it is in place and it is easy to use then, but if you are looking for easy in the overall code base this might not be the way to go. If that is the case then I suggest you simply add some common audit info parameter to all your service methods. The big caveat there is of course when some developer forgets to add it or it is not set properly when calling down stream services. It's all about trade-offs, as alway in code :).
Down the rabbit hole
In fabric transport there are two classes that are involved in the communication: an instance of a IServiceRemotingClient on the client side, and an instance of IServiceRemotingListener on the service side. In each request from the client the messgae body and ServiceRemotingMessageHeaders are sent. Out of the box these headers include information of which interface (i.e. which service) and which method are being called (and that's also how the underlying receiver knows how to unpack that byte array that is the body). For calls to Actors, which goes through the ActorService, additional Actor information is also included in those headers.
The tricky part is hooking into that exchange and actually setting and then reading additional headers. Please bear with me here, it's a number of classes involved in this behind the curtains that we need to understand.
The service side
When you setup the IServiceRemotingListener for your service (example for a Stateless service) you usually use a convenience extension method, like so:
protected override IEnumerable<ServiceInstanceListener> CreateServiceInstanceListeners()
{
yield return new ServiceInstanceListener(context =>
this.CreateServiceRemotingListener(this.Context));
}
(Another way to do it would be to implement your own listener, but that's not really what we wan't to do here, we just wan't to add things on top of the existing infrastructure. See below for that approach.)
This is where we can provide our own listener instead, similar to what that extention method does behind the curtains. Let's first look at what that extention method does. It goes looking for a specific attribute on assembly level on your service project: ServiceRemotingProviderAttribute. That one is abstract, but the one that you can use, and which you will get a default instance of, if none is provided, is FabricTransportServiceRemotingProviderAttribute. Set it in AssemblyInfo.cs (or any other file, it's an assembly attribute):
[assembly: FabricTransportServiceRemotingProvider()]
This attribute has two interesting overridable methods:
public override IServiceRemotingListener CreateServiceRemotingListener(
ServiceContext serviceContext, IService serviceImplementation)
public override IServiceRemotingClientFactory CreateServiceRemotingClientFactory(
IServiceRemotingCallbackClient callbackClient)
These two methods are responsible for creating the the listener and the client factory. That means that it is also inspected by the client side of the transaction. That is why it is an attribute on assembly level for the service assembly, the client side can also pick it up together with the IService derived interface for the client we want to communicate with.
The CreateServiceRemotingListener ends up creating an instance FabricTransportServiceRemotingListener, however in this implementation we cannot set our own specific IServiceRemotingMessageHandler. If you create your own sub class of FabricTransportServiceRemotingProviderAttribute and override that then you can actually make it create an instance of FabricTransportServiceRemotingListener that takes in a dispatcher in the constructor:
public class AuditableFabricTransportServiceRemotingProviderAttribute :
FabricTransportServiceRemotingProviderAttribute
{
public override IServiceRemotingListener CreateServiceRemotingListener(
ServiceContext serviceContext, IService serviceImplementation)
{
var messageHandler = new AuditableServiceRemotingDispatcher(
serviceContext, serviceImplementation);
return (IServiceRemotingListener)new FabricTransportServiceRemotingListener(
serviceContext: serviceContext,
messageHandler: messageHandler);
}
}
The AuditableServiceRemotingDispatcher is where the magic happens. It is our own ServiceRemotingDispatcher subclass. Override the RequestResponseAsync (ignore HandleOneWay, it is not supported by service remoting, it throws an NotImplementedException if called), like this:
public class AuditableServiceRemotingDispatcher : ServiceRemotingDispatcher
{
public AuditableServiceRemotingDispatcher(ServiceContext serviceContext, IService service) :
base(serviceContext, service) { }
public override async Task<byte[]> RequestResponseAsync(
IServiceRemotingRequestContext requestContext,
ServiceRemotingMessageHeaders messageHeaders,
byte[] requestBodyBytes)
{
byte[] userHeader = null;
if (messageHeaders.TryGetHeaderValue("user-header", out auditHeader))
{
// Deserialize from byte[] and handle the header
}
else
{
// Throw exception?
}
byte[] result = null;
result = await base.RequestResponseAsync(requestContext, messageHeaders, requestBodyBytes);
return result;
}
}
Another, easier, but less flexible way, would be to directly create an instance of FabricTransportServiceRemotingListener with an instance of our custom dispatcher directly in the service:
protected override IEnumerable<ServiceInstanceListener> CreateServiceInstanceListeners()
{
yield return new ServiceInstanceListener(context =>
new FabricTransportServiceRemotingListener(this.Context, new AuditableServiceRemotingDispatcher(context, this)));
}
Why is this less flexible? Well, because using the attribute supports the client side as well, as we see below
The client side
Ok, so now we can read custom headers when receiving messages, how about setting those? Let's look at the other method of that attribute:
public override IServiceRemotingClientFactory CreateServiceRemotingClientFactory(IServiceRemotingCallbackClient callbackClient)
{
return (IServiceRemotingClientFactory)new FabricTransportServiceRemotingClientFactory(
callbackClient: callbackClient,
servicePartitionResolver: (IServicePartitionResolver)null,
traceId: (string)null);
}
Here we cannot just inject a specific handler or similar as for the service, we have to supply our own custom factory. In order not to have to reimplement the particulars of FabricTransportServiceRemotingClientFactory I simply encapsulate it in my own implementation of IServiceRemotingClientFactory:
public class AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClientFactory : IServiceRemotingClientFactory, ICommunicationClientFactory<IServiceRemotingClient>
{
private readonly ICommunicationClientFactory<IServiceRemotingClient> _innerClientFactory;
public AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClientFactory(ICommunicationClientFactory<IServiceRemotingClient> innerClientFactory)
{
_innerClientFactory = innerClientFactory;
_innerClientFactory.ClientConnected += OnClientConnected;
_innerClientFactory.ClientDisconnected += OnClientDisconnected;
}
private void OnClientConnected(object sender, CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient> e)
{
EventHandler<CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>> clientConnected = this.ClientConnected;
if (clientConnected == null) return;
clientConnected((object)this, new CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>()
{
Client = e.Client
});
}
private void OnClientDisconnected(object sender, CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient> e)
{
EventHandler<CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>> clientDisconnected = this.ClientDisconnected;
if (clientDisconnected == null) return;
clientDisconnected((object)this, new CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>()
{
Client = e.Client
});
}
public async Task<IServiceRemotingClient> GetClientAsync(
Uri serviceUri,
ServicePartitionKey partitionKey,
TargetReplicaSelector targetReplicaSelector,
string listenerName,
OperationRetrySettings retrySettings,
CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
var client = await _innerClientFactory.GetClientAsync(
serviceUri,
partitionKey,
targetReplicaSelector,
listenerName,
retrySettings,
cancellationToken);
return new AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClient(client);
}
public async Task<IServiceRemotingClient> GetClientAsync(
ResolvedServicePartition previousRsp,
TargetReplicaSelector targetReplicaSelector,
string listenerName,
OperationRetrySettings retrySettings,
CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
var client = await _innerClientFactory.GetClientAsync(
previousRsp,
targetReplicaSelector,
listenerName,
retrySettings,
cancellationToken);
return new AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClient(client);
}
public Task<OperationRetryControl> ReportOperationExceptionAsync(
IServiceRemotingClient client,
ExceptionInformation exceptionInformation,
OperationRetrySettings retrySettings,
CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
return _innerClientFactory.ReportOperationExceptionAsync(
client,
exceptionInformation,
retrySettings,
cancellationToken);
}
public event EventHandler<CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>> ClientConnected;
public event EventHandler<CommunicationClientEventArgs<IServiceRemotingClient>> ClientDisconnected;
}
This implementation simply passes along anything heavy lifting to the underlying factory, while returning it's own auditable client that similarily encapsulates a IServiceRemotingClient:
public class AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClient : IServiceRemotingClient, ICommunicationClient
{
private readonly IServiceRemotingClient _innerClient;
public AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClient(IServiceRemotingClient innerClient)
{
_innerClient = innerClient;
}
~AuditedFabricTransportServiceRemotingClient()
{
if (this._innerClient == null) return;
var disposable = this._innerClient as IDisposable;
disposable?.Dispose();
}
Task<byte[]> IServiceRemotingClient.RequestResponseAsync(ServiceRemotingMessageHeaders messageHeaders, byte[] requestBody)
{
messageHeaders.SetUser(ServiceRequestContext.Current.User);
messageHeaders.SetCorrelationId(ServiceRequestContext.Current.CorrelationId);
return this._innerClient.RequestResponseAsync(messageHeaders, requestBody);
}
void IServiceRemotingClient.SendOneWay(ServiceRemotingMessageHeaders messageHeaders, byte[] requestBody)
{
messageHeaders.SetUser(ServiceRequestContext.Current.User);
messageHeaders.SetCorrelationId(ServiceRequestContext.Current.CorrelationId);
this._innerClient.SendOneWay(messageHeaders, requestBody);
}
public ResolvedServicePartition ResolvedServicePartition
{
get { return this._innerClient.ResolvedServicePartition; }
set { this._innerClient.ResolvedServicePartition = value; }
}
public string ListenerName
{
get { return this._innerClient.ListenerName; }
set { this._innerClient.ListenerName = value; }
}
public ResolvedServiceEndpoint Endpoint
{
get { return this._innerClient.Endpoint; }
set { this._innerClient.Endpoint = value; }
}
}
Now, in here is where we actually (and finally) set the audit name that we want to pass along to the service.
Call chains and service request context
One final piece of the puzzle, the ServiceRequestContext, which is a custom class that allows us to handle an ambient context for a service request call. This is relevant because it gives us an easy way to propagate that context information, like the user or a correlation id (or any other header information we want to pass between client and service), in a chain of calls. The implementation ServiceRequestContext looks like:
public sealed class ServiceRequestContext
{
private static readonly string ContextKey = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
public ServiceRequestContext(Guid correlationId, string user)
{
this.CorrelationId = correlationId;
this.User = user;
}
public Guid CorrelationId { get; private set; }
public string User { get; private set; }
public static ServiceRequestContext Current
{
get { return (ServiceRequestContext)CallContext.LogicalGetData(ContextKey); }
internal set
{
if (value == null)
{
CallContext.FreeNamedDataSlot(ContextKey);
}
else
{
CallContext.LogicalSetData(ContextKey, value);
}
}
}
public static Task RunInRequestContext(Func<Task> action, Guid correlationId, string user)
{
Task<Task> task = null;
task = new Task<Task>(async () =>
{
Debug.Assert(ServiceRequestContext.Current == null);
ServiceRequestContext.Current = new ServiceRequestContext(correlationId, user);
try
{
await action();
}
finally
{
ServiceRequestContext.Current = null;
}
});
task.Start();
return task.Unwrap();
}
public static Task<TResult> RunInRequestContext<TResult>(Func<Task<TResult>> action, Guid correlationId, string user)
{
Task<Task<TResult>> task = null;
task = new Task<Task<TResult>>(async () =>
{
Debug.Assert(ServiceRequestContext.Current == null);
ServiceRequestContext.Current = new ServiceRequestContext(correlationId, user);
try
{
return await action();
}
finally
{
ServiceRequestContext.Current = null;
}
});
task.Start();
return task.Unwrap<TResult>();
}
}
This last part was much influenced by the SO answer by Stephen Cleary. It gives us an easy way to handle the ambient information down a hierarcy of calls, weather they are synchronous or asyncronous over Tasks. Now, with this we have a way of setting that information also in the Dispatcher on the service side:
public override Task<byte[]> RequestResponseAsync(
IServiceRemotingRequestContext requestContext,
ServiceRemotingMessageHeaders messageHeaders,
byte[] requestBody)
{
var user = messageHeaders.GetUser();
var correlationId = messageHeaders.GetCorrelationId();
return ServiceRequestContext.RunInRequestContext(async () =>
await base.RequestResponseAsync(
requestContext,
messageHeaders,
requestBody),
correlationId, user);
}
(GetUser() and GetCorrelationId() are just helper methods that gets and unpacks the headers set by the client)
Having this in place means that any new client created by the service for any aditional call will also have the sam headers set, so in the scenario ServiceA -> ServiceB -> ServiceC we will still have the same user set in the call from ServiceB to ServiceC.
what? that easy? yes ;)
From inside a service, for instance a Stateless OWIN web api, where you first capture the user information, you create an instance of ServiceProxyFactoryand wrap that call in a ServiceRequestContext:
var task = ServiceRequestContext.RunInRequestContext(async () =>
{
var serviceA = ServiceProxyFactory.CreateServiceProxy<IServiceA>(new Uri($"{FabricRuntime.GetActivationContext().ApplicationName}/ServiceA"));
await serviceA.DoStuffAsync(CancellationToken.None);
}, Guid.NewGuid(), user);
Ok, so to sum it up - you can hook into the service remoting to set your own headers. As we see above there is some work that needs to be done to get a mechanism for that in place, mainly creating your own subclasses of the underlying infrastructure. The upside is that once you have this in place, then you have a very easy way for auditing your service calls.
I know that the services get wired-up by instantiating the BasicAppHost, and the IoC by using the ConfigureContainer property, but where is the right place to add the filters? The test in question never fire the global filter:
[TestFixture]
public class IntegrationTests
{
private readonly ServiceStackHost _appHost;
public IntegrationTests()
{
_appHost = new BasicAppHost(typeof(MyServices).Assembly)
{
ConfigureContainer = container =>
{
//
}
};
_appHost.Plugins.Add(new ValidationFeature());
_appHost.Config = new HostConfig { DebugMode = true };
_appHost.GlobalRequestFilters.Add(ITenantRequestFilter);
_appHost.Init();
}
private void ITenantRequestFilter(IRequest req, IResponse res, object dto)
{
var forTennant = dto as IForTenant;
if (forTennant != null)
RequestContext.Instance.Items.Add("TenantId", forTennant.TenantId);
}
[TestFixtureTearDown]
public void TestFixtureTearDown()
{
_appHost.Dispose();
}
[Test]
public void CanInvokeHelloServiceRequest()
{
var service = _appHost.Container.Resolve<MyServices>();
var response = (HelloResponse)service.Any(new Hello { Name = "World" });
Assert.That(response.Result, Is.EqualTo("Hello, World!"));
}
[Test]
public void CanInvokeFooServiceRequest()
{
var service = _appHost.Container.Resolve<MyServices>();
var lead = new Lead
{
TenantId = "200"
};
var response = service.Post(lead); //Does not fire filter.
}
}
ServiceStack is set at 4.0.40
Updated
After perusing the ServiceStack tests (which I highly recommend BTW) I came across a few example of the AppHost being used AND tested. It looks like the "ConfigureAppHost" property is the right place to configure the filters, e.g.
ConfigureAppHost = host =>
{
host.Plugins.Add(new ValidationFeature());
host.GlobalRequestFilters.Add(ITenantRequestFilter);
},
ConfigureContainer = container =>
{
}
Updated1
And they still don't fire.
Updated2
After a bit of trial and error I think it's safe to say that NO, the filters are not hooked up while using the BasicAppHost. What I have done to solve my problem was to switch these tests to use a class that inherits from AppSelfHostBase, and use the c# servicestack clients to invoke the methods on my service. THIS does cause the global filters to be executed.
Thank you,
Stephen
No the Request and Response filters only fire for Integration Tests where the HTTP Request is executed through the HTTP Request Pipeline. If you need to test the full request pipeline you'd need to use a Self-Hosting Integration test.
Calling a method on a Service just does that, i.e. it's literally just making a C# method call on a autowired Service - there's no intermediate proxy magic intercepting the call in between.
I have an extremely odd error and wondered if anyone knew the reason for this.
When I create a new DataObject and TableController called Content and ContentController respectively, it doesn't register the tablecontroller and the help documentation it automatically generates has lost its styling.
I can't connect to the controller at all but all other controllers work as expected.
If I just rename it to DataController and that's just the name of the controller, not the dataobject everything works perfectly.
Is ContentController a reserved word of some kind or is this just specifically happening on my machine?
public class DataController : TableController<Content>
{
protected override void Initialize(HttpControllerContext controllerContext)
{
base.Initialize(controllerContext);
MobileContext context = new MobileContext();
DomainManager = new EntityDomainManager<Content>(context, Request, Services);
}
// GET tables/Content
public IQueryable<Content> GetAllContent()
{
return Query();
}
// GET tables/Content/48D68C86-6EA6-4C25-AA33-223FC9A27959
public SingleResult<Content> GetContent(string id)
{
return Lookup(id);
}
// PATCH tables/Content/48D68C86-6EA6-4C25-AA33-223FC9A27959
public Task<Content> PatchContent(string id, Delta<Content> patch)
{
return UpdateAsync(id, patch);
}
// POST tables/Content/48D68C86-6EA6-4C25-AA33-223FC9A27959
public async Task<IHttpActionResult> PostContent(Content item)
{
Content current = await InsertAsync(item);
return CreatedAtRoute("Tables", new { id = current.Id }, current);
}
// DELETE tables/Content/48D68C86-6EA6-4C25-AA33-223FC9A27959
public Task DeleteContent(string id)
{
return DeleteAsync(id);
}
}
An MVC project will create an application directory called Content. This will override your route mapping to the ContentController.
You can get around this if desired through changing RouteMaps and other trickery although probably the simpliest answer is to change the name of the controller...
I have an MVC application in which I have a controller that receives data from the user and then uploads a file to Azure blob storage. The application is using Unity IoC to handle dependency injection.
During the workflow I have isolated the following code as demonstrating the problem
public class MvcController : Controller
{
private IDependencyResolver _dependencyResolver;
public MvcController() : this(DependencyResolver.Current)
{
}
public MvcController(IDependencyResolver dependencyResolver)
{
this._dependencyResolver = dependencyResolver;
}
public GetService<T>()
{
T resolved = _dependencyResolver.GetService<T>()
if (resolved == null)
throw new Exception(string.Format("Dependency resolver does not contain service of type {0}", typeof(T).Name));
return resolved;
}
}
public class MyController : MvcController
{
[NoAsyncTimeout]
public async Task<ActionResult> SaveFileAsync(/* A bunch of arguments */)
{
/* A bunch of code */
//This line gets a concrete instance from HttpContext.Current successfully...
IMyObject o = GetService<IMyObject>();
await SaveFileToAzure(/* A bunch of parameters */);
.
.
/* Sometime later */
Method2(/* A bunch of parameters */);
}
private Method2(/* A bunch of parameters */)
{
//This line fails because HttpContext.Current is null
IMyObject o = GetService<IMyObject>();
/* A bunch of other code */
}
private async Task SaveFileToAzure(/* A bunch of parameters */)
{
//Grab a blob container to store the file data...
CloudBlobContainer blobContainer = GetBlobContainer();
ICloudBlob blob = blobContainer.GetBlockBlobReference(somePath);
Stream dataStream = GetData();
System.Threading.CancellationToken cancelToken = GetCancellationToken();
//All calls to DependencyResolver.GetService<T>() after this line of code fail...
response = await blob.UploadStreamAsync(dataStream, cancelToken);
/* A bunch of other code */
}
}
Unity has a registration for my object:
container.RegisterType<IMyObject, MyObject>(new HttpLifetimeManager());
My lifetime manager is defined as follows:
public sealed class HttpRequestLifetimeManager : LifetimeManager
{
public Guid Key { get; private set; }
public HttpRequestLifetimeManager()
{
this.Key = Guid.NewGuid();
}
public override object GetValue()
{
return HttpContext.Current.Items[(object)this.Key];
}
public override void SetValue(object newValue)
{
HttpContext.Current.Items[(object)this.Key] = newValue;
}
public override void RemoveValue()
{
HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove((object)this.Key);
}
}
Nothing complicated.
Stepping into the HttpRequestLifetimeManager on the failing GetService() calls shows that after the UploadStreamAsync() call HttpContext.Current is null...
Has anyone else come across this problem? If so, is this a bug? Is this expected behaviour? Am I doing something out of the ordinary? What should I do to resolve it?
I can hack around it by storing a reference to HttpContext.Current prior to the offending call and restoring it after, but that doesn't seem like the right approach.
Any ideas?
To echo #Joachim - http context may not be available to your async thread. Compare the current thread id where you can see httpcontext is available, to the thread id where you can see that it isn't - i'm assuming you will see they are 2 different threads. If my assumption is correct this may be a sign that your main thread (the one with httpcontext) does not have a "synchronizationcontext". (you can see http://blogs.msdn.com/b/pfxteam/archive/2012/01/20/10259049.aspx for more details of how that works) If so, it may mean that the code immediately after your await statement is actually not running on the same thread as the code prior to the await statement! So from your perspective, one moment you have http context and the next you don't because execution has actually been switched to another thread! You should probably look at implementing / setting a synchronizationcontext on your main thread if that's the case and then control will be returned to your original thread with http context and that should fix your problem, or alternatively you could retrieve your object from http context on the original thread and find a way to pass it as a parameter to the async method/s so that they don't need to access http context to get their state.
I'm working on an API where I'd like to be able to customize the response structure based on a parameter from the client. Response filters seem like a good place to do this in order to avoid doing so in each service or action. The problem is that while I have access to the response DTO returned by the action, and could change its properties, I can't find how or where to replace the object entirely.
Naively replacing the object in the response filter did not work, but this help illustrate what I'm trying to do:
public class ChangeResponseAttribute : ResponseFilterAttribute
{
public override void Execute(IHttpRequest req, IHttpResponse res, object responseDto)
{
var overrideText = req.QueryString["override"];
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(overrideText))
responseDto = new { Message = overrideText };
}
}
[ChangeResponse]
public class TodosService : Service
{
public object Get(Todos request)
{
return new object[0];
}
}
It looks like another option would be to write the custom response directly & end the request, but that would bypass any other processing left to do by ServiceStack.
Is there a better place to do this than a response filter? Or do I need to bite the bullet and return the optimal DTO in each action?
You can't change the Response DTO in a filter, but yes one option is to write the response in the filter itself (see this answer for an example of how to do this).
The other option is to use a ServiceRunner and override the OnAfterExecute() custom hook which does let you modify the response returned, e.g:
public class MyServiceRunner<T> : ServiceRunner<T>
{
public override object OnAfterExecute(
IRequestContext requestContext, object response)
{
// Called just after any Action is executed
var overrideText = req.Get<IHttpRequest>().QueryString["override"];
return !string.IsNullOrEmpty(overrideText)
? new { Message = overrideText } : null;
}
}
To get ServiceStack to use it you need to override the CreateServiceRunner method in your AppHost, e.g:
public override IServiceRunner<TRequest> CreateServiceRunner<TRequest>(
ActionContext actionContext)
{
return new MyServiceRunner<TRequest>(this, actionContext);
}