Recommended pattern for REST service which requires HTTP headers? - servicestack

I am implementing a RESTful service which will be consumed by a Dojo framewwork's RestStore, which will permit binding the service to various widgets like an interactive grid or a type-ahead ajax select.
The RestStore wants to send and receive the HTTP Range and Content-Range headers in order to restrict the results of the queries to particular subrange.
What is the best practice pattern in ServiceStack (new API) for reacting to HTTP headers as part of the service? Normally, the service method like Get doesn't have access to the HTTP headers, unless I have missed an alternate API.
The current way that I see is to implement an attribute like
public class RangeSupporter : Attribute, IHasRequestFilter, IHasResponseFilter
which will parse the headers on request, and write the headers on response. The DTO would then be marked for this filter.
The filter would transfer the values, say 'First' and 'Last' in and out of the DTO. However, to know that the DTO even has such attributes, it would have to have some marker interface like
interface IHasRangeSupport {
int First { set; get; }
int Last { set; get; }
int Total { set; get; }
}
so that the filter can transfer the information into and out of the DTO the with code similar to:
var r = request as IHasRangeSupport;
if (r != null) {
/// Access the DTO attributes for the range parameters
}
This seems like a lot of ceremony, and a very awkward implementation.
Is there a better pattern for accessing the HTTP headers when implementing a REST service?
In my particular use case, supporting non-REST endpoints (like SOAP) are not required. Only the HTTP end-point is important.

What is the best practice pattern in ServiceStack (new API) for reacting to HTTP headers as part of the service?
I believe you can get the headers in your service class...
public class FooService : Service
{
public object Get(Foo reqeust)
{
//get header
var h1 = base.RequestContext.GetHeader("headerName");
//get header differently
var h2 = base.Request.Headers.Get("headerName");
}
}

Related

AutoPopulate attribute not working on AutoQuery DTO

I am trying to get the new AutoPopulate attribute to work but I am having some difficulty understanding the new AutoQuery functionality.
To test it out I am aiming to replace this service that is a standard AutoQuery endpoint but it also filters by the logged in users ID. I want to replace it so it works completely with just the model definition.
public class DevExtremeService : ServiceBase
{
public IAutoQueryDb AutoQuery { get; set; }
public QueryResponse<DeWatchedUrlResponse> Any(WatchedUrlDevExRequest request)
{
var q = AutoQuery.CreateDevXQuery(request, Request.GetRequestParams(), Request);
q.Where(x => x.UserAuthCustomId == GetUserId());
var response = AutoQuery.Execute(request, q, base.Request);
return response;
}
}
[Route("/de/watched-urls")]
public class WatchedUrlDevExRequest : QueryDb<WatchedUrlRecord, DeWatchedUrlResponse>
{
}
So I deleted the service and updated model to:
[ValidateIsAuthenticated]
[AutoPopulate(nameof(WatchedUrlDevExRequest.UserAuthCustomId), Eval = "userAuthId")]
[Route("/de/watched-urls")]
public class WatchedUrlDevExRequest : QueryDb<WatchedUrlRecord, DeWatchedUrlResponse>
{
public long UserAuthCustomId { get; set; }
}
My understanding from reading the release notes is that userAuthId is a variable declared in the AutoQuery #script context that is added by default.
I have tried a few different variations and I cannot get the property to populate. The docs seem focused on audit history and multitenancy but really I am just looking for a quick way to make endpoints.
I have 2 main questions:
Why is the auto populate not working on this property?
Where can I see the default #script definition so I can see how things like userAuthId are defined and better get an understanding how to add my own?
edit
I re-read docs and I gues this only works when writing data to db. I really like the concept of being able to apply #script to a request model via attribute. Is that possible?
AutoQuery CRUD's [AutoPopulate] attribute initially only populated AutoQuery CRUD's Data Model when performing CRUD operations, e.g. Inserting, Updating or Deleting entities.
For ensuring a query only returns a users records, it's recommended to use an AutoFilter instead, which behaves as expected ensuring the query is always applied to the Data Model, e.g:
[ValidateIsAuthenticated]
[Route("/de/watched-urls")]
[AutoFilter(QueryTerm.Ensure, nameof(WatchedUrlRecord.UserAuthCustomId),
Eval = "userAuthId")]
public class WatchedUrlDevExRequest : QueryDb<WatchedUrlRecord, DeWatchedUrlResponse>
{
}
However as I can see it's a useful feature I've also just added support for [AutoPopulate] & [AutoMap] attributes on Query DTOs in this commit where your AutoQuery DTO would work as expected where it populates the Request DTO property:
[ValidateIsAuthenticated]
[AutoPopulate(nameof(WatchedUrlDevExRequest.UserAuthCustomId), Eval = "userAuthId")]
[Route("/de/watched-urls")]
public class WatchedUrlDevExRequest : QueryDb<WatchedUrlRecord, DeWatchedUrlResponse>
{
public long UserAuthCustomId { get; set; }
}
This change is available from v5.10.3 that's now available on MyGet.
An alternative approach to populate AutoQuery's Request DTO you could have a custom AutoQuery implementation like you have, an Extensible Query Filter or custom base class or I'd personally go with a Global Request Filter that updates all Request DTOs with a shared interface, e.g:
GlobalRequestFilters.Add((req, res, dto) => {
if (dto is IHasUserAuthCustomId authDto)
{
var session = req.GetSession();
if (session.IsAuthenticated)
authDto.UserAuthCustomId = session.UserAuthId;
}
});
Or you could wrap this logic in a Request Filter Attribute and apply the behavior to Request DTOs that way.
Note: userAuthId is a ServiceStack #Script method that returns the currently authenticated User Id.

ServiceStack Json Serializer ignore properties

I have a business requirement to only send permissioned properties in our response payload. For instance, our response DTO may have several properties, and one of them is SSN. If the user doesn't have permissions to view the SSN then I would never want it to be in the Json response. The second requirement is that we send null values if the client has permissions to view or change the property. Because of the second requirement setting the properties that the user cannot view to null will not work. I have to still return null values.
I have a solution that will work. I create an expandoObject by reflecting through my DTO and add only the properties that I need. This is working in my tests.
I have looked at implementing ITextSerializer. I could use that and wrap my response DTO in another object that would have a list of properties to skip. Then I could roll my own SerializeToString() and SerializeToStream(). I don't really see any other ways at this point. I can't use the JsConfig and make a SerializeFn because the properties to skip would change with each request.
So I think that implementing ITextSerializer is a good option. Are there any good examples of this getting implemented? I would really like to use all the hard work that was already done in the serializer and take advantage of the great performance. I think that in an ideal world I would just need to add a check in the WriteType.WriteProperties() to look and the property is one to write, but that is internal and really, most of them are so I can't really take advantage of them.
If someone has some insight please let me know! Maybe I am making the implementation of ITextSerialzer a lot harder that it really is?
Thanks!
Pull request #359 added the property "ExcludePropertyReference" to the JsConfig and the JsConfigScope. You can now exclude references in scope like I needed to.
I would be hesitant to write my own Serializer. I would try to find solutions that you can plug in into the existing ServiceStack code. That way you will have to worry less about updating dlls and breaking changes.
One potential solution would be decorating your properties with a Custom Attributes that you could reflect upon and obscure the property values. This could be done in the Service before Serialization even happens. This would still include values that they user does not have permission to see but I would argue that if you null those properties out they won't even be serialized by JSON anyways. If you keep all the properties the same they you will keep the benefits of strong typed DTOs.
Here is some hacky code I quickly came up with to demonstrate this. I would move this into a plugin and make the reflection faster with some sort of property caching but I think you will get the idea.
Hit the url twice using the following routes to see it in action.
/test?role
/test?role=Admin (hack to pretend to be an authenticated request)
[System.AttributeUsage(System.AttributeTargets.Property)]
public class SecureProperty : System.Attribute
{
public string Role {get;set;}
public SecureProperty(string role)
{
Role = role;
}
}
[Route("/test")]
public class Test : IReturn
{
public string Name { get; set; }
[SecureProperty("Admin")]
public string SSN { get; set; }
public string SSN2 { get; set; }
public string Role {get;set;}
}
public class TestService : Service
{
public object Get(Test request)
{
// hack to demo roles.
var usersCurrentRole = request.Role;
var props = typeof(Test).GetProperties()
.Where(
prop => ((SecureProperty[])prop
.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(SecureProperty), false))
.Any(att => att.Role != usersCurrentRole)
);
var t = new Test() {
Name = "Joe",
SSN = "123-45-6789",
SSN2 = "123-45-6789" };
foreach(var p in props) {
p.SetValue(t, "xxx-xx-xxxx", null);
}
return t;
}
}
Require().StartHost("http://localhost:8080/",
configurationBuilder: host => { });
I create this demo in ScriptCS. Check it out.

How would you implement a partial request & response, like the youtube api, using ServiceStack?

In the Youtube API, there is the power to request a "partial feed".
This allows the app developer to tailor the size and sturcture of the data returned, by specifying which "fields" to return.
i.e. GET api/person/1?fields=(id,email) would return a DTO containing only the id and the email fields, not the whole person response.
How would you attempt this using ServiceStack? Is there some way to attach a callback to the serialiser to control which properties to include in the response object?
From my experience servicestack only returns fields that actually has data. If my experience is correct then all you would need to do is figure out the best way to architect the request so that it is asking for specific data to return, this way you would only populate the response with data requested thus servicestack would only return that.
I implemented this for an API that only returns JSON.
First I created two structs to (de)serialize and interpret the "fields" query argument recursive syntax:
FieldSelector, which specifies a field and possibly its children FieldSelection enclosed between parenthesis;
FieldsSelection, which is a comma-separated list of FieldSelector.
I've used structs instead of classes because, AFAIK, you can't override class (de)serialization from/to URLs in ServiceStack. With structs you can do it by overriding ToString (serializer) and providing a constructor accepting a string as parameter (deserializer).
Then you include this on every request DTO that returns JSON:
FieldsSelection Fields { get; set; }
On a custom ServiceRunner<T>.OnAfterExecute you serialize the response DTO to JSON, parse it with ServiceStack.Text's JsonObject and apply the fields selection recursively with a method like this:
private static JsonObject Apply(this JsonObject json, FieldsSelection fieldMask)
{
IEnumerable<string> keysToRemove = json.Keys.ToList().Except(fieldMask.Keys);
foreach (var key in keysToRemove)
json.Remove(key);
foreach (var selector in fieldMask.Selectors.Values.Where(s => s.HasSubFieldsSelection))
{
var field = json[selector.Field];
if (field == null)
continue;
switch (field[0])
{
case '{':
json[selector.Field] = Apply(json.Object(selector.Field), selector.SubFieldsSelection).ToJson();
break;
case '[':
var itensArray = json.ArrayObjects(selector.Field);
for (int i = 0; i < itensArray.Count; i++)
itensArray[i] = Apply(itensArray[i], selector.SubFieldsSelection);
json[selector.Field] = itensArray.ToJson();
break;
default:
throw new ArgumentException("Selection incompatible with object structure");
}
}
return json;
}
Then you return the result as your response DTO. I've also implemented negative fields selectors (fields=-foo selects all DTO fields except foo), but you get the idea.
Look at ServiceStack.Text.JsConfig properties, they have all the hooks and customizations ServiceStack's text serializers support. Specifically the hooks that allow you to custom deserialization are:
JsConfig<T>.DeserializeFn
JsConfig<T>.RawDeSerializeFn
JsConfig<T>.OnDeserializedFn
We were able to implement said filtering by adding custom service runner and using some reflection in it to construct ExpandoObject with required field set by response DTO. See this for more info on service runners.

servicestack Razor view with request and response DTO

I'm having a go with the razor functionality in service stack.
I have a razor cshtml view working for one of my response DTO's.
I need to access some values from the request DTO in the razor view that have been filled in from some fields from the REST route, so i can construct a url to put into the response html page and also label some form labels.
Is there anyway of doing this? I don't want to duplicate the property from the request DTO into the response DTO just for this html view. Because i'm trying to emulate an existing REST service of another product, i do not want to emit extra data just for the html view.
eg
http://localhost/rest/{Name}/details/{Id}
eg
#inherits ViewPage<DetailsResponse>
#{
ViewBag.Title = "todo title";
Layout = "HtmlReport";
}
this needs to come from the request dto NOT #Model
link to user
link to user details
If you want to access the Request DTO it needs to be referenced by either by adding the Request to the Response DTO (which you don't want to do), so the other option is to add it to the IHttpRequest.Items Dictionary which is the preferred way to pass data between your filters and services.
public class MyService : Service {
public object Any(MyRequest request) {
base.Request.Items["RequestDto"] = request;
return MyResponse { ... };
}
}
Then in your view:
#{
var myRequest = (MyRequest)base.Request.Items["RequestDto"];
}
Wrapping Re-usable functionality in Request Filters
If you find you need to access the Request DTO in your views a lot, then rather than manually assigning it in each service, you can create a Request Filter Attribute or if you want it assigned all the time in a Global Request Filter.
public class SetRequestDtoAttribute : RequestFilterAttribute {
public override void Execute(
IHttpRequest req, IHttpResponse res, object requestDto)
{
req.Items["RequestDto"] = requestDto;
}
}
Then you can add this behavior by decorating the [SetRequestDto] attribute on different levels of granularity on either an Action, Service, Request DTO or base class.

Generating a URL to a service in ServiceStack

How would I generate a URL to a specific service defined in ServiceStack?
I want to include full or relative URLs to other endpoints as part of the response DTO. RestServiceBase contains RequestContext.AbsoluteUri, but that is entirely dependent on the request.
Reverse Routing
The Reverse Routing section in the wiki shows how to use extension methods on a popualated Request DTO to generate relative and absolute URI's:
If you use [Route] metadata attributes (as opposed to the Fluent API) you will be able to generate strong-typed URI's using just the DTOs, letting you create urls outside of ServiceStack web framework as done with .NET Service Clients using the ToUrl(HttpMethod) and ToAbsoluteUri(HttpMethod), e.g:
[Route("/reqstars/search", "GET")]
[Route("/reqstars/aged/{Age}")]
public class SearchReqstars : IReturn<ReqstarsResponse>
{
public int? Age { get; set; }
}
var relativeUrl = new SearchReqstars { Age = 20 }.ToGetUrl();
var absoluteUrl = new SearchReqstars { Age = 20 }.ToAbsoluteUri();
relativeUrl.Print(); //= /reqstars/aged/20
absoluteUrl.Print(); //= http://www.myhost.com/reqstars/aged/20
The Email Contacts demo shows an example of using the above Reverse Routing extension methods to populate routes for HTML Forms and Links in Razor Views.
Other Reverse Routing Extension methods
new RequestDto().ToPostUrl();
new RequestDto().ToPutUrl();
new RequestDto().ToDeleteUrl();
new RequestDto().ToOneWayUrl();
new RequestDto().ToReplyUrl();
Accessing Http Request
You can also inspect the incoming underlying httpRequest with:
var httpReq = base.RequestContext.Get<IHttpRequest>();
As well as the underlying ASP.NET (or HttpListener) Request object with:
var aspNetReq = httpReq.OriginalRequest;
They should contain additional properties that should be more useful.

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