Wanted to discuss under-the-hood information about how session is managed in case of mobile apps - native, hybrid and web applications?
Please validate below Session Management scenarios:
Native (Android/iOS) application
Using Session Cookies: Session cookies are stored in your DefaultHttpClient object. Instead of creating a new DefaultHttpClient (AFNetworking in iOS) for every request, hold onto it and reuse it, and your session cookies will be maintained.
Hybrid (JET, ionic, Angular, Cordova) application
Use localStorage to store the user info after a successful login. On logout clear the localStorage.
Web-HTML5 apps
Attribute-SessionStorage in HTML5: Can be used by the sites to add data to the session storage, and it will be accessible to any page from the same site opened in that window i.e session and as soon as you close the window, session would be lost.
Thanks and Regards,
Rohit
Old way of managing sessions is via cookies.
How it works? When your user enter username and password in your login screen, you give him a session cookie. This cookie is maintained every interaction within your user browser and your web site.
You need to maintain this cookie in your server side. In addition to this session cookie, web sites hold additional information about user in server side session too.
What is problem of this approach?
Inherently, it is not scale-able.
If your user numbers are not high, you can hold this session cookies and additional information in one web server. But if user numbers are high, you need to solve with this with different approaches, like holding this session information in a database or session server.
What is new way of storing sessions
Modern browsers has a local storage capacity. This local storage is ideal for non-critical information for users. Session storage is one session only and when user closes browser (tab), it is deleted. Local storage is for one site, and you need to explicitly delete it or users may choose to delete it.
Store any non-critical information here. If your users logs out from your site, delete them.
Hybrid (JET, ionic, Angular, Cordova) application
A Cordova application is no different from web browser. Here you are sure that your user is only user in this computer (mobile phone); therefore, use exclusively local storage.
Native (Android/iOS) application
Use sqlite to hold your all session information. Never use cookie authorization with native application, it is unnecessary and not scale-able. Use token authorization.
All applications.
For all applications use your login screen to get authorization token, for example JWT token and store it in your application.
web application - local storage
hybrid application mobile - local storage
native application - sqlite
Read difference between cookie authorization vs token authorization here.
Confidential Information
Do not store any confidential information (password, credit card ..) in any of these storage. Store them in your database, and show them to user case by case.
What are the technical pros and cons of localStorage, sessionStorage, session and cookies, and when would I use one over the other?
This is an extremely broad scope question, and a lot of the pros/cons will be contextual to the situation.
In all cases, these storage mechanisms will be specific to an individual browser on an individual computer/device. Any requirement to store data on an ongoing basis across sessions will need to involve your application server side - most likely using a database, but possibly XML or a text/CSV file.
localStorage, sessionStorage, and cookies are all client storage solutions. Session data is held on the server where it remains under your direct control.
localStorage and sessionStorage
localStorage and sessionStorage are relatively new APIs (meaning, not all legacy browsers will support them) and are near identical (both in APIs and capabilities) with the sole exception of persistence. sessionStorage (as the name suggests) is only available for the duration of the browser session (and is deleted when the tab or window is closed) - it does, however, survive page reloads (source DOM Storage guide - Mozilla Developer Network).
Clearly, if the data you are storing needs to be available on an ongoing basis then localStorage is preferable to sessionStorage - although you should note both can be cleared by the user so you should not rely on the continuing existence of data in either case.
localStorage and sessionStorage are perfect for persisting non-sensitive data needed within client scripts between pages (for example: preferences, scores in games). The data stored in localStorage and sessionStorage can easily be read or changed from within the client/browser so should not be relied upon for storage of sensitive or security-related data within applications.
Cookies
This is also true for cookies, these can be trivially tampered with by the user, and data can also be read from them in plain text - so if you are wanting to store sensitive data then the session is really your only option. If you are not using SSL, cookie information can also be intercepted in transit, especially on an open wifi.
On the positive side cookies can have a degree of protection applied from security risks like Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)/Script injection by setting an HTTP only flag which means modern (supporting) browsers will prevent access to the cookies and values from JavaScript (this will also prevent your own, legitimate, JavaScript from accessing them). This is especially important with authentication cookies, which are used to store a token containing details of the user who is logged on - if you have a copy of that cookie then for all intents and purposes you become that user as far as the web application is concerned, and have the same access to data and functionality the user has.
As cookies are used for authentication purposes and persistence of user data, all cookies valid for a page are sent from the browser to the server for every request to the same domain - this includes the original page request, any subsequent Ajax requests, all images, stylesheets, scripts, and fonts. For this reason, cookies should not be used to store large amounts of information. The browser may also impose limits on the size of information that can be stored in cookies. Typically cookies are used to store identifying tokens for authentication, session, and advertising tracking. The tokens are typically not human readable information in and of themselves, but encrypted identifiers linked to your application or database.
localStorage vs. sessionStorage vs. Cookies
In terms of capabilities, cookies, sessionStorage, and localStorage only allow you to store strings - it is possible to implicitly convert primitive values when setting (these will need to be converted back to use them as their type after reading) but not Objects or Arrays (it is possible to JSON serialise them to store them using the APIs). Session storage will generally allow you to store any primitives or objects supported by your Server Side language/framework.
Client-side vs. Server-side
As HTTP is a stateless protocol - web applications have no way of identifying a user from previous visits on returning to the web site - session data usually relies on a cookie token to identify the user for repeat visits (although rarely URL parameters may be used for the same purpose). Data will usually have a sliding expiry time (renewed each time the user visits), and depending on your server/framework data will either be stored in-process (meaning data will be lost if the web server crashes or is restarted) or externally in a state server or database. This is also necessary when using a web-farm (more than one server for a given website).
As session data is completely controlled by your application (server side) it is the best place for anything sensitive or secure in nature.
The obvious disadvantage of server-side data is scalability - server resources are required for each user for the duration of the session, and that any data needed client side must be sent with each request. As the server has no way of knowing if a user navigates to another site or closes their browser, session data must expire after a given time to avoid all server resources being taken up by abandoned sessions. When using session data you should, therefore, be aware of the possibility that data will have expired and been lost, especially on pages with long forms. It will also be lost if the user deletes their cookies or switches browsers/devices.
Some web frameworks/developers use hidden HTML inputs to persist data from one page of a form to another to avoid session expiration.
localStorage, sessionStorage, and cookies are all subject to "same-origin" rules which means browsers should prevent access to the data except the domain that set the information to start with.
For further reading on client storage technologies see Dive Into Html 5.
LocalStorage
Pros:
Web storage can be viewed simplistically as an improvement on cookies, providing much greater storage capacity. If you look at the Mozilla source code we can see that 5120KB (5MB which equals 2.5 Million chars on Chrome) is the default storage size for an entire domain. This gives you considerably more space to work with than a typical 4KB cookie.
The data is not sent back to the server for every HTTP request (HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - reducing the amount of traffic between client and server.
The data stored in localStorage persists until explicitly deleted. Changes made are saved and available for all current and future visits to the site.
Cons:
It works on same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be available on the same origin.
Cookies
Pros:
Compared to others, there's nothing AFAIK.
Cons:
The 4K limit is for the entire cookie, including name, value, expiry date etc. To support most browsers, keep the name under 4000 bytes, and the overall cookie size under 4093 bytes.
The data is sent back to the server for every HTTP request (HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - increasing the amount of traffic between client and server.
Typically, the following are allowed:
300 cookies in total
4096 bytes per cookie
20 cookies per domain
81920 bytes per domain(Given 20 cookies of max size 4096 = 81920 bytes.)
sessionStorage
Pros:
It is similar to localStorage.
The data is not persistent i.e. data is only available per window (or tab in browsers like Chrome and Firefox). Data is only available during the page session. Changes made are saved and available for the current page, as well as future visits to the site on the same tab/window. Once the tab/window is closed, the data is deleted.
Cons:
The data is available only inside the window/tab in which it was set.
Like localStorage, it works on same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be available on the same origin.
Checkout across-tabs - how to facilitate easy communication between cross-origin browser tabs.
OK, LocalStorage as it's called it's local storage for your browsers, it can save up to 10MB, SessionStorage does the same, but as it's name saying, it's session based and will be deleted after closing your browser, also can save less than LocalStorage, like up to 5MB, but Cookies are very tiny data storing in your browser, that can save up 4KB and can be accessed through server or browser both...
I also created the image below to show the differences at a glance:
here is a quick review and with a simple and quick understanding
from instructor Beau Carnes from freecodecamp
These are properties of 'window' object in JavaScript, just like document is one of a property of window object which holds DOM objects.
Session Storage property maintains a separate storage area for each given origin that's available for the duration of the page session i.e as long as the browser is open, including page reloads and restores.
Local Storage does the same thing, but persists even when the browser is closed and reopened.
You can set and retrieve stored data as follows:
sessionStorage.setItem('key', 'value');
var data = sessionStorage.getItem('key');
Similarly for localStorage.
Exact use case -
If you want your page to always hold some data that is not confidential, then you can use localStorage.
If the server needs to know some information like authentication keys, you should use cookies to store them.
sessionStorage can be used to store the state of the interface, i.e., whenever you visit a page, customize it, visit another page and return to the same page, you would want to show the page how the user customized it. That’s a good use case for sessionStorage.
The Web Storage API provides mechanisms by which browsers can securely store key/value pairs, in a much more intuitive fashion than using cookies.
The Web Storage API extends the Window object with two new properties — Window.sessionStorage and Window.localStorage. — invoking one of these will create an instance of the Storage object, through which data items can be set, retrieved, and removed. A different Storage object is used for the sessionStorage and localStorage for each origin (domain).
Storage objects are simple key-value stores, similar to objects, but they stay intact through page loads.
localStorage.colorSetting = '#a4509b';
localStorage['colorSetting'] = '#a4509b';
localStorage.setItem('colorSetting', '#a4509b');
The keys and the values are always strings. To store any type convert it to String and then store it. It's always recommended to use Storage interface methods.
var testObject = { 'one': 1, 'two': 2, 'three': 3 };
// Put the object into storage
localStorage.setItem('testObject', JSON.stringify(testObject));
// Retrieve the object from storage
var retrievedObject = localStorage.getItem('testObject');
console.log('Converting String to Object: ', JSON.parse(retrievedObject));
The two mechanisms within Web Storage are as follows:
sessionStorage maintains a separate storage area for each given originSame-origin policy that's available for the duration of the page session (as long as the browser is open, including page reloads and restores).
localStorage does the same thing, but persists even when the browser is closed and reopened.
Storage « Local storage writes the data to the disk, while session storage writes the data to the memory only. Any data written to the session storage is purged when your app exits.
The maximum storage available is different per browser, but most browsers have implemented at least the w3c recommended maximum storage limit of 5MB.
+----------------+--------+---------+-----------+--------+
| | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | IE |
+----------------+--------+---------+-----------+--------+
| LocalStorage | 10MB | 10MB | 5MB | 10MB |
+----------------+--------+---------+-----------+--------+
| SessionStorage | 10MB | 10MB | Unlimited | 10MB |
+----------------+--------+---------+-----------+--------+
Always catch LocalStorage security and quota exceeded errors
QuotaExceededError: When storage limits exceeds on this function window.sessionStorage.setItem(key, value);, it throws a "QuotaExceededError" DOMException exception if the new value couldn't be set. (Setting could fail if, e.g., the user has disabled storage for the site, or if the quota has been exceeded.)
DOMException.QUOTA_EXCEEDED_ERR is 22, example fiddle.
SecurityError : Uncaught SecurityError: Access to 'localStorage' is denied for this document.
CHROME:-Privacy and security « Content settings « Cookies « Block third-party cookies.
StorageEvent « The storage event is fired on a document's Window object when a storage area changes. When a user agent is to send a storage notification for a Document, the user agent must queue a task to fire an event named storage at the Document object's Window object, using StorageEvent.
Note: For a real world example, see Web Storage Demo. check out the source code
Listen to the storage event on dom/Window to catch changes in the storage. fiddle.
Cookies (web cookie, browser cookie) Cookies are data, stored in small text files as name-value pairs, on your computer.
JavaScript access using Document.cookie
New cookies can also be created via JavaScript using the Document.cookie property, and if the HttpOnly flag is not set, existing cookies can be accessed from JavaScript as well.
document.cookie = "yummy_cookie=choco";
document.cookie = "tasty_cookie=strawberry";
console.log(document.cookie);
// logs "yummy_cookie=choco; tasty_cookie=strawberry"
Secure and HttpOnly cookies HTTP State Management Mechanism
Cookies are often used in web application to identify a user and their authenticated session
When receiving an HTTP request, a server can send a Set-Cookie header with the response. The cookie is usually stored by the browser, and then the cookie is sent with requests made to the same server inside a Cookie HTTP header.
Set-Cookie: <cookie-name>=<cookie-value>
Set-Cookie: <cookie-name>=<cookie-value>; Expires=<date>
Session cookies will get removed when the client is shut down. They don't specify the Expires or Max-Age directives.
Set-Cookie: sessionid=38afes7a8; HttpOnly; Path=/
Permanent cookies expire at a specific date (Expires) or after a specific length of time (Max-Age).
Set-Cookie: id=a3fWa; Expires=Wed, 21 Oct 2015 07:28:00 GMT; Secure; HttpOnly
The Cookie HTTP request header contains stored HTTP cookies previously sent by the server with the Set-Cookie header. HTTP-only cookies aren't accessible via JavaScript through the Document.cookie property, the XMLHttpRequest and Request APIs to mitigate attacks against cross-site scripting (XSS).
Cookies are mainly used for three purposes:
Session management « Logins, shopping carts, game scores, or anything else the server should remember
Personalization « User preferences, themes, and other settings
Tracking (Recording and analyzing user behavior) « Cookies have a domain associated to them. If this domain is the same as the domain of the page you are on, the cookies is said to be a first-party cookie. If the domain is different, it is said to be a third-party cookie. While first-party cookies are sent only to the server setting them, a web page may contain images or other components stored on servers in other domains (like ad banners). Cookies that are sent through these third-party components are called third-party cookies and are mainly used for advertising and tracking across the web.
Cookies were invented to solve the problem "how to remember information about the user":
When a user visits a web page, his name can be stored in a cookie.
Next time the user visits the page, cookies belonging to the page is added to the request. This way the server gets the necessary data to "remember" information about users.
GitHubGist Example
As summary,
localStorage persists over different tabs or windows, and even if we close the browser, accordingly with the domain security policy and user choices about quota limit.
sessionStorage object does not persist if we close the tab (top-level browsing context) as it does not exists if we surf via another tab or window.
Web Storage (session, local) allows us to save a large amount of key/value pairs and lots of text, something impossible to do via cookie.
Cookies that are used for sensitive actions should have a short lifetime only.
Cookies mainly used for advertising and tracking across the web. See for example the types of cookies used by Google.
Cookies are sent with every request, so they can worsen performance (especially for mobile data connections). Modern APIs for client storage are the Web storage API (localStorage and sessionStorage) and IndexedDB.
Local storage: It keeps store the user information data without expiration date this data will not be deleted when user closed the browser windows it will be available for day, week, month and year.
In Local storage can store 5-10mb offline data.
//Set the value in a local storage object
localStorage.setItem('name', myName);
//Get the value from storage object
localStorage.getItem('name');
//Delete the value from local storage object
localStorage.removeItem(name);//Delete specifice obeject from local storege
localStorage.clear();//Delete all from local storege
Session Storage: It is same like local storage date except it will delete all windows when browser windows closed by a web user.
In Session storage can store upto 5 mb data
//set the value to a object in session storege
sessionStorage.myNameInSession = "Krishna";
Session: A session is a global variable stored on the server. Each session is assigned a unique id which is used to retrieve stored values.
Cookies: Cookies are data, stored in small text files as name-value pairs, on your computer. Once a cookie has been set, all page requests that follow return the cookie name and value.
LocalStorage:
Web storage can be viewed simplistically as an improvement on
cookies, providing much greater storage capacity. Available size is
5MB which considerably more space to work with than a typical 4KB
cookie.
The data is not sent back to the server for every HTTP request
(HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - reducing the amount of
traffic between client and server.
The data stored in localStorage persists until explicitly deleted.
Changes made are saved and available for all current and future
visits to the site.
It works on same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be
available on the same origin.
Cookies:
We can set the expiration time for each cookie
The 4K limit is for the entire cookie, including name, value, expiry date etc. To support most browsers, keep the name under 4000 bytes, and the overall cookie size under 4093 bytes.
The data is sent back to the server for every HTTP request (HTML, images, JavaScript, CSS, etc) - increasing the amount of traffic between client and server.
sessionStorage:
It is similar to localStorage.
Changes are only available per window (or tab in browsers like Chrome and Firefox). Changes made are saved and available for the current page, as well as future visits to the site on the same window. Once the window is closed, the storage is deleted
The data is available only inside the window/tab in which it was set.
The data is not persistent i.e. it will be lost once the window/tab is closed. Like localStorage, it works on same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be available on the same origin.
localStorage
data stored with localStorage has no expiration date, and gets cleared only through JavaScript, or clearing the Browser cache / Locally Stored Data.
The storage limit is the maximum amongst the three.
The data stored in localStorage persists until explicitly deleted. Changes made are saved and available for all current and future visits to the site.
It works on the same-origin policy. So, data stored will only be available on the same origin.
sessionStorage
It stores data only for a session, meaning that the data is stored until the browser (or tab) is closed.
Data is never transferred to the server.
Changes are only available per window (or tab in browsers like Chrome and Firefox). Changes made are saved and available for the current page, as well as future visits to the site on the same window. Once the window is closed, the storage is deleted.
I would expect that sessionStorage would be faster as it doesn’t need to write to the disk (lacking persistency). But my simple console tests shows that they are equal in performance 😔
let item = 500000;
const start = Date.now();
while(item) {
sessionStorage.setItem('testKey', item);
item = parseInt(sessionStorage.getItem('testKey'));
item--;
}
console.log('SessionStorage PERF: (lower is better)', Date.now() - start);
same code for local storage
let item = 500000;
const start = Date.now();
while(item) {
localStorage.setItem('testKey', item);
item = parseInt(localStorage.getItem('testKey'));
item--;
}
console.log('LocalStorage PERF: (lower is better)', Date.now() - start);
results:
SessionStorage PERF: (lower is better) 2889
SessionStorage PERF: (lower is better) 2852
LocalStorage PERF: (lower is better) 2807
LocalStorage PERF: (lower is better) 2889
I have an iPhone application that needs to collect data from an online MySQL database. I've written a PHP web service so I collect the data with JSON. The problem is that everyone can see the data if they go to the URL now. How do i secure the data transfer properly?
Thanks for your suggestions.
Typically, if you are showing data private to a particular user, then each user will generally have an account (user id and password). The app will pass the user's credentials to the server before the server will provide the user's data.
You can also do something similar using SSO integration, or OAuth (ala Facebook).
In some cases, your app may only pass the username/password on the initial call and receive a session ID, which the app passes on remaining calls. This allows the server to store session data.
Even if the data isn't private to a particular user, you can use accounts to restrict access and privileges for a publicly reachable web API.
In all of the above cases encryption such as SSL (HTTPS) must be used to protect the authentication mechanisms and data transfer.
I'm assuming your data is public for all users of your app, in other words, you don't want to implement a login mechanism for your users. If you just want to make sure you return the data only to users of your app and not to anyone who happens to enter the right URL in their browser, you will need to sign your requests, so that only requests from your app are accepted by your server.
I use a secret key that my app uses to create a hash/digest of the request which the server verifies (it knows the secret key as well). Also I make sure requests cannot be replayed if they are intercepted by adding a timestamp and a nonce. The timestamp is checked to be within 10 minutes of the server's timestamp (relaxed sync) and the nonce must be unique (server keeps the last 10 minutes of nonces). This way no-one can copy the same request, the server will just serve an error if they try.
This post explains how to sign your requests in a bit more detail:
http://www.naildrivin5.com/blog/2008/04/21/rest-security-signing-requests-with-secret-key-but-does-it-work.html
If your API and Website making ajax calls to that API are on the same server (even domain), how would you secure that API?
I only want requests from the same server to be allowed! No remote requests from any other domain, I already have SSL installed does this mean I am safe?
I think you have some confusion that I want to help you clear up.
By the very fact that you are talking about "making Ajax calls" you are talking about your application making remote requests to your server. Even if your website is served from the same domain you are making a remote request.
I only want requests from the same server to be allowed!
Therein lies the problem. You are not talking about making a request from server-to-server. You are talking about making a request from client-to-server (Ajax), so you cannot use IP restrictions (unless you know the IP address of every client that will access your site).
Restricting Ajax requests does not need to be any different than restricting other requests. How do you keep unauthorized users from accessing "normal" web pages? Typically you would have the user authenticate, create a user session on the server, pass a session cookie back tot he client that is then submitted on every request, right? All that stuff works for Ajax requests too.
If your API is exposed on the internet there is nothing you can do to stop others from trying to make requests against it (again, unless you know all of the IPs of allowed clients). So you have to have server-side control in place to authorize remote calls from your allowed clients.
Oh, and having TLS in place is a step in the right direction. I am always amazed by the number of developers that think they can do without TLS. But TLS alone is not enough.
Look at request_referer in your HTTP headers. That tell you where the request came from.
It depends what you want to secure it from.
Third parties getting their visitors to request data from your API using the credentials those visitors have on your site
Browsers will protect you automatically unless you take steps to disable that protection.
Third parties getting their visitors to request changes to your site using your API and the visitors' credentials
Nothing Ajax specific about this. Implement the usual defences against CSRF.
Third parties requesting data using their own client
Again, nothing Ajax specific about this. You can't prevent the requests being made. You need authentication/authorisation (e.g. password protection).
I already have SSL installed does this mean I am safe
No. That protects data from being intercepted enroute. It doesn't prevent other people requesting the data, or accessing it from the end points.
you can check ip address, if You want accept request only from same server, place .htaccess in api directory or in virtualhost configuration directive, to allow only 127.0.0.1 or localhost. Configuration is based on what webserver You have.