I didn’t post much recently because I wanted to focus on coding: even if it’s still to early, even if a lot of functions I want to implement are still missing, and even if the code is not too robust, I want to start using the application within my company and I want to publish a limited but working version on GitHub, so anyone can download it and see it in action.

Global variables again

My basic idea was to declare a authenticated_user variable in the Base.mp component, then Base.mp will set it to the currently authenticated user if there’s a valid session, or to Guest otherwise.

(Reminder: I should only move out the login/logout actions from Base.mp to the proper components, but at the moment is fine).

Since every component will implicitly extend Base.mp:

<%flags>
  extends => "Base.mp"
</%flags>

I can be sure that every component will have the correct authenticated user set. Or not? Something I didn’t expect happens here:

  • If not set, $.authenticated_user will be set to GET or POST data, e.g. http://localhost:5000/?authenticated_user=12345 (ouch!)</li>
  • I can set a value to authenticated_user on Base.mp, so it will always override GET or POST data. But does this code smell? I’m still undecided.</li>
  • Components called with <& component.mc &> won’t have the correct $.authenticated_user set, so I have to call it with <& component.mc, authenticated_user=>$.authenticated_user &>
  • But what if I call the component directly with http://localhost:5000/component?authenticated_user=12345 (ouch again!). No problem as Base.mp will override the GET or POST data.

At the moment I can still go on with this approach, it’s starting to get less elegant and I need to clarify something (which component extends which other? what’s the logic here?) but if ever, I will fix it later.

Temporary fixes have a funny way of becoming permanent because you never seem to have the time/inclination/memory to go back and fix them.

If you’re going to fix something, fix it the right way the first time.

Lol, yes, but I’m still a little unsure on what other alternatives do I have:

$m->notes("authenticated_user", "12345")

?

It seems to have the same behavior on called components, but it turns out that I just can use…. sessions!

$m->session->{auth_id} = $auth_id;
$m->req->{env}->{'psgix.session.options'}->{expires} = "+1h";

Some things I have to implement: the timeout, and making a session expire immediately. But I didn’t have to reinvent the wheel like I was doing before hehe, plack sessions have ad ID stored on the server, and that’s enough at the moment!