I have a social media app written in Flutter. Users can see the profiles each other and block/unblock them. I'm using MySQL to keep that data. Now I want to implement chat feature using Firebase Firestore (or maybe MongoDB). When a user sends a message to another user, should I check if user blocked another user from MySQL every time, so user can't send new message. Is this a good practice in chat application, or should I store the "blocked" data at Firebase also.
I researched this subject deeply but didn't find any solution.
Like when user is trying to send a message to another user so in the list of the recipients you are also retrieving the value for (is particular user is blocked by the current user), if it's so you are checking this on that time.
Secondly, if you want this to check when sending to server. So, you can manage this using firestore transaction in which you might get the object of the sender and check to whom the sender has blocked and you may throw an exception. The other thing you might manage it using Firestore Security Rules as well.
So you can code like most of the current social media works.
Simply let the user send a message but put a condition on the receiver
user side so if the user is blocked by the receiver then it should not show
the chat in the user chat list also should not send a notification if the user
is blocked by the receiver.
Related
I'm making a Hangouts chatbot for my company, and one of the things we need to do is retrieve a user's email address. The API guide says that chatbot should be able to access this information without any additional permissions or API's, but I can't find out how to do it. I can get the user object from the event, but from that I can only get displayName.
Thanks
It turns out you can access an email with event.user.email
Doesn't say that anywhere in the documentation but whatever...
I am currently working on a website using React where I want to be able to have user login. Right now my strategy is to send form data to the server (express) on submit, and if the info matches a user in my DB, the server sends back a signed JWT with no sensitive information (just the username).
Once the client receives the JWT, I am adding it to localStorage as well as adding the decoded data of it to my redux store. I plan to have my redux store holding the currently logged in user.
I believe there may be a security issue in my site because currently I have it so when the user first arrives at the site, If there is a JWT, it is added to my axios headers and the decoded JWT is set to be the current user. The code looks like this:
if(localStorage.jwtToken) { // If token present, most likely a user is signed in
setAuthorizationToken(localStorage.jwtToken) // Set that token to head all api calls
store.dispatch(setCurrentUser(jwt.decode(localStorage.jwtToken))) // Set user in redux store
}
Currently I've found that if someone just goes into my localStorage, copies my JWT and adds it to their localStorage then bam, they are me. I'm unsure if this is really a security flaw because the only way I've recreated this myself is by physically copying the token from one browser to another. But in general this seems very unsafe that just taking my token steals my identity.
If anyone knows a way to make this more secure or if there is a better strategy, or at least tell me what I'm doing wrong that would be highly appreciated.
How can another person get your token? Give expire time to token needed. Maybe try different way for securing token, especially give more security in API side. When logging in, store log activity in database and create unique field to identificate it such ip address or user-agent, or maybe detect is that user have been hit login endpoint before or not.
I'm working on a project that consumes Service Now API (Rest). To do so our client has registered us as a user in order to login and make all service calls we need to. This project has an interface where users can login once they have an account on Service Now as well, the username they type to log in has nothing to do with service now by the way, but later they associate theirs service now users to it. They can do some operations through this interface, where all of them are done using the integration user/pass not their service now users theirselves, even because they do not need to share their passwords with us. But it's needed to track the correct user to register on service now and I'm in trouble specifically about commenting on an incident. The endpoint to comment is the following :
http://hostname/api/now/table/incident/{sys_id}
where request body is a json object just as simple as :
{
"comments": "My comment is foo bar"
}
but when this comment is registered on Service Now it is under integration user instead the user which commented. Is there any way I could keep a specific user, considering I already have the user id on Service Now ready to inform it on the request the way it should be.
I tried reading Service Now documentation but had no clue how to solve it, altought I've found something about impersonate
This is happening because you're being proxied through the "Integration User" instead of your own account. As long as this is the case, your comments are going to be attributed to the Integration User.
I can think of two ways to fix this issue.
Ask the client to log you into their system directly as a user.
Implement a special API (Scripted REST API, available in Geneva or later) that allows you to identify the Incident and enter the comment, and then the script forges the comment on your behalf, attributing authorship correctly.
The first solution can be expensive due to possible additional licensing costs.
The second solution will require a willing client to devote 2-3 hours of development time, depending on the programmer.
Firstly, you need an integration user with suffient rights. Our integration user has suffient rights out of the box, but your story could be different. A quick check is to try impersonate as other user using menu.
Login as integration user to ServiceNow instance.
Go to https://{instance}.service-now.com/nav_to.do
Click on username at top right corner. This is a drop down.
There should be at least three menu items: "Profile", "Impersonate User", and "Logout". If you do not have "Impersonate User" in this menu, your integration user miss some permissions. Contact system administrator if you miss this menu item to configure appropriate permissions.
Then you need to find sys_id of user that you want to impersonate. For example:
https://{instance}.service-now.com/api/now/table/sys_user?sysparm_query=user_name={username}&sysparm_fields=sys_id
If you have suffient privileges, you could invoke the folling endpoint with sys id of user that you want to impersonate:
HTTP POST to https://{instance}.service-now.com/api/now/ui/impersonate/{user_sys_id} with body "{}" and content type "application/json". You need to provide HTTP basic authentication to this query as your integration user.
The response code on success is 200. The response body could be ignored. The interesting result of this response is a set of cookies for impersonated user in response headers. These cookies could be used for subsequent REST API calls until they expire. Use some HTTP rest client dependent method to capture them and to provide them to next calls.
For Apache HTTP Client (Java), I'm creating http client context using:
HttpClientContext context = HttpClientContext.create();
context.setCookieStore(new BasicCookieStore());
Pass thing context to impersonation request and to subsequent API calls until I get 401 reply, after that I'm reaquiring cookies. Setting new cookie store is important, as otherwise some default cookies store is used.
Two things to note:
This API looks like internal one, so it could change at any time. If it happens, look for what "Impresonate User" menu item does, and repeat it youselves.
ServiceNow permissions are quite fine-grained, so the target user could lack permissions to perform operation. In some cases, if there is no permission to update the field the operation PATCH on object returns reponse 200, but field is not updated. This introduces a surprising mode of failure when you use impersonation.
I have a REST api written in node which uses HATEOAS. The user is required to have an account before they can access the bulk of it.
They register an account with login details, then login to obtain an access token, and then use that token in order to access any endpoints that aren't register or login.
Issuing a get to the root responds with a directory with available actions.
Q: What is the correct response from register, to tell the client what it can do next (i.e. login)?
register technically creates a new resource on the server so a 201 CREATED and a Location header would seem appopriate. However the login reference isn't the location of the newly created resource.
Should I return 201 Created with a Location pointing to the newly created user (e.g. /myaccount or /users/{id} and then include a login link in the response body?
{
_links: {
self: { href: "what goes here?" },
x:login: { href: "/login" }
}
}
Do I not tell the client at all, and require them to do a get on the application root in order to fetch a list of available endpoints. This should include login anyway. Assuming the client had to do that in the first place to get the register link it should already have login.
Expecting the client already to already have the login link feels uncomfortable as it relies on an assumption of the client's prior activity.
Requiring the client to issue another request to the root directory after registering seems mean, inefficient and unnecessary. If the client has just created a resource it seems only fair that the server should respond with what it can do with it next.
I like to have my api's act no differently than a webpage. If you want the UX of your application to be the user is taken to login after they register, then 302 them from a successful register to the login resource. And upon successful login, 302 to them to the appropriate destination (IE, if they tried to access something with no token, then take them to login, with a destination of the original requested resource). That's and important part to your #3. Having a link off the root that leads to login, but you need to protect all the other links such that they indicate (and link to) a login being required to access the resource. The client app should expect to get this login required response at any time as tokens can (and do) expire at any time.
Following on this, it might make sense to do the JWT as a cookie instead of as an Authorization Header, it would make it a bit easier for the client (they just have to setup a cookie jar)..if the client is say a native mobile app that maintains a single connection setup. If it's server to server, then auth header makes sense. I'd go about supporting both to cover both scenarios.
Continuing on the idea of thinking of the api as a web site. Why have them login after registration at all? Why not have the registering of an account end up with the login token being sent? they just set their user/pass, why make them enter it again? I realize with some more exotic architectures the register service can not perform the login action (perhaps it doesn't have the private key to sign the token), but if it is possible i'd consider it.
If you really want to stick to the 201 header (which is fine, just make sure the docs of your register relationship indicate that), then option 2 is the closest in my opinion. A location header to the URL of the account just created a 201 is pretty standard for creating a user. But, i'd not return what you've supposed there. You're kind of returning a account-created resource (the thing with the login link), but do you really need this custom resource? If you want to give some messaging back to the client (like "Account Created") in that resource then absolutely yes, but you could also just give them back the root resource.
tl;dr; Decide what you want your UX to be and then make your API implement your UX.
I need to get the user email when I get document permissions. I have seen this problem here
value attribute for Permissions Resource not populated in responses
but in about service does not appear my email. I need it because I have a service account and my application need know the user email. I want to avoid call to profile service.
Is this possible? from where I can get the user email?
Thanks.
As you rightly say, you will have to make a call to the profile service. In some ways it is better like this, because it separates the concerns of the Drive API and the Profile API, and can use specific scoping to let the user know exactly what they are authorizing your app to do.