I have a drop-down selection of available languages. Currently, clicking on a language is mapped to a method in controller which updates the Play Session (which is a cookie under the hood) with the selected language and returns index page.
View:
English
Controller:
def setLanguage(language: String): Action[AnyContent] = Action { implicit request =>
val updatedSession = request.session + (("lang", language))
Redirect(routes.Application.index()).withSession(updatedSession)
}
As you can see, I redirect to index page and it's working fine. However, as the language selection is available at all times on my page, it may be clicked from /resource1, /resource2, /resource3 etc. and I would like to refresh that particular view instead of being returned to home page. I cannot simply get request.uri in the controller and refresh whatever it's pointing to because setLanguage() is mapped to its own route, so my request URI is always /language?lang=whatever.
So, how do I know that prior to invoking GET on /language, client was on, say, /items so I can reload items page instead of returning him to home page? Should I send a GET request with resource as a parameter (e.g. ?lang=en&location=items) to know which page to render? Should I make an ajax request and call window.location.reload() on success? Do I even need to go to server or can I simply update the PLAY_SESSION cookie manually from the client?
I'm using Play 2.3.7.
No you cannot update the PLAY_SESSION cookie from the client side, since it is signed by play with the application secret.
So I think the easiest solution would be, as suggested, to send the current resource as parameter and trigger a redirect.
There is an HTTP header called Referer that contains the url from which the request was made. As far as I know it's supported and used by all modern browsers when you navigate from a page to another.
You can simply redirect to that Referer url.
Another solution is to track in a session or a cookie all pages that are accessed by an user, by using some kind of interceptor in Global.scala or a custom Action builder that you use everywhere. Then in case of language change you can simply redirect to the last page that was accessed by the user.
Related
On page load, say for a particular route for (e.g. https://localhost:8000/home/index), a service is called and the response from the service is rendered to the page at the client side.
On the same page, I have a link that pops up a Backbone.js modal and from the modal a click event triggers which hits another url (e.g. https://localhost:8000/home/index2) upon which another service call triggers and the response is rendered to another html page.
On the same html page, I want to display a value which I got from the first service call on page load. However, I am unable to retain that value as there are two different requests each time. Hence, I cannot even append the value from first response to the request object and use it a second time.
You can use JavaScripts Web Storage API to storage information on client browser.
MDN Web Storage API
For example, If you are on the first screen and call a service, store the service information on localStorage
localStorage.setItem('firstService', serviceResponseObject);
Once you are navigated to second page, you can use localStorage to read to previous service information
localStorage.getItem('firstService');
There are multiple ways to store state between requests.
From the server, if you're using say Express etc, you could store the result in a Session. Or you can even store state in the requests query params, or from a POST request.
You could also store some data on the client end, using say Cookies or localstorage.
What you choose really depends, it might be best if you explain in more detail what sort of information your passing between pages.
If it's just a simple value, I would go for using query params.
eg. Just place in your url https://localhost:8000/home/index2?value=123, and then from node.js, req.query.value would have your value.
I'm developing a single page jQuery & Backbone.js web app. The backend is a JBoss 6 application server.
Until now we had the following structure:
There is only one servlet (front controller). Every request from the JavaScript client goes through here.
In the servlet - at the first request of a certain JS client - I make a look p to a stateful session bean. For the next requests of this client, I store the result of the look up in an HTTP session container. So every JS client has exactly one stateful session bean. This connection is kept by a session cookie.
Now I have an additional requirement:
When the user has two browser tabs (in one browser), they should have two isolated instances of the web app in every browser tab. Because of that I have a problem with session cookies because this session cookie is for all browser tabs.
I have to change the structure so that:
The servlet has to generate a new session ID for the first request of a certain JS client. This session ID is communicated to the client.
With every POST to the backend the JS client has to send this session ID.
My question is:
Until now I saved the result of the look up in an HTTP Session object and I hadn't to think about generating a session ID. But now I have to store this somewhere else, where?
Has anybody experience with this kind of setting and can help me?
Update:
Thank you BalusC for this very interesting approach.
When I understood you well, this means:
All individual JS clients of the tabs of one browser share one HTTP session object. And in this HTTP session object, every tab has its own entry point. That sounds really good. So I still can use the whole HTTP session infrastructure and don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Autogenerate an unique value on the initial GET request which you store and pass around on every subsequent postback as a hidden input value. Use this unique value as identifier of the session attribute representing the view-scoped data.
During the 1st request on a brand new session, do:
Map<String, ViewData> viewScope = new HashMap<String, ViewData>();
session.setAttribute("viewScope", viewScope);
(the ViewData represents the view-specific data you'd like to track across postbacks on the same view)
During every GET request, do:
String viewDataId = UUID.randomUUID().toString();
viewScope.put(viewDataId, new ViewData());
request.setAttribute("viewDataId", viewDataId);
During generating the HTML, do:
<input type="hidden" name="viewDataId" value="${viewDataId}" />
During every POST request, do:
ViewData viewData = viewScope.get(request.getParameter("viewDataId"));
// Get/set view-specific data in there.
Make sure that jQuery also passes this hidden input around (which shouldn't be a big problem if you already properly use $(form).serialize() or e.g. AjaxForm plugin to ajaxify the forms).
If you're familiar with Java EE's MVC framework JSF, then it may be useful to know that its #ViewScoped annotation works roughly the same as described above. See also a.o. How to choose the right bean scope?
You can use session tracking with URL rewriting. See here:
Session shared in between tabs
I have the following scenario :
user goes to www.mysite.com/someProduct
this is rewritten internally to /products.php?p=someProduct
in product.php, I detect that this user is currently logged in so I want to switch to his specific url but I still want to show the requested product, so I do:
set a "productRequest" cookie with "someProduct" in it
redirect with a location header to www.mysite.com/theUser
the new location is internally rewritten to /users.php?u=theUser
in users.php, I may access the "productRequest" cookie (although not a use case right now)
once the client gets served the user page, the javascript code will need to access the "requestProduct" cookie to perform some Ajax calls and fetch "someProduct" info.
Note that I do not want to pass "someProduct" in the user specific URL.
Also note that I could keep the request for "someProduct" in the user's SESSION on the server side but since that info is ultimately destined to javascript on the client's side, I find it somewhat ugly.
Now here is my question : are there any guaranties (would come from the http protocol I guess) that the cookie will always be received by the client before the redirect in order to be sent back to the newly requested page ?
THank you all !
Yes. As soon as you set that cookie (which is done with an HTTP response header) the browser will begin using it in subsequent requests and it will be available to any JavaScript trying to access it.
I have a static page (by static, I mean html, css and javascript are fixed on the page).
On the server side, I can tell (based on server-side session info) whether this is the first loading of the page or not by a particular user. Now, based on this detail, I want to signal the front end (e.g. by setting something in the response header, maybe?), so that a javascript function on the page can perform some action based on whether this is the first time the user has landed on this page.
The server that actually serves the page is Nginx, and the server that handles the logic, session, etc is Tornado. So presumably I need to do something in tornado, and then instruct nginx to deliver the static page.
Is this doable? If so, what is the most robust way of doing so?
You could achieve this with cookies: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/cookies.html
WIth cookies you would send a specific cookie w/ the response headers on the first view. Then each time the page loads, have your javascript check the specific cookie
Or use local storage: http://diveintohtml5.info/storage.html
Similar to the cookie method, but on the first view have javascript store a key=value pair in local storage, and check against that each time the page loads. Something along these lines:
(function () {
window.onload = function () {
if (localStorage.getItem("SeenBefore")) {
// Not first time viewed
} else {
localStorage.setItem("SeenBefore", true);
// First view
}
}
}())
Another option is, on the serverside, you could set a session variable the first time the page is viewed, then check agianst that each time a user sends a request for the page. This could also be achieved using cookies.
I have an AJAX form that submits GET requests. Because these are all GET requests these should be easily bookmark-able. Preferably I'd make my Ajax request, update the screen and then update window.location.href to be the URL for the new page.
Unfortunately this reloads the page. Is there any way I can get around this? Basically I'd like the URL bar to be a permalink bar, but it needs to be able to change to keep up with the state of the page.
window.location.hash is no good because that doesn't get sent to the server.
window.history.replaceState( {} , title, new_URL );
This will update the current page URL with a new one without refreshing.
Arguments:
Data object (must be one that could be serialized to text)
The new title of the changed window URL
The URL to change to (without refreshing)
The you could use the window.onpopstate = function(event){...} to listen to events when a user goes back or forward in the browser history and change things however you wish.
The hash is the way to go. Because, as you point out, changes to the hash don't get sent to the server, you have to send an async request to the server as well as updating the hash.
As a simple example, if your URL is http://server.com/page?id=4, when the user triggers the action you send an AJAX request for http://server.com/page?id=4, and set the page URL to http://server.com/page#id=4.
Furthermore, you have to have something to restore the state if the user reloads. This would usually be done by reading the hash value client-side and sending an async request to the server based on the state represented by the hash value.
if you want to do which works in current browser, you can't change window.location.href without reloading the page
your only option is to to change window.location.hash.
you can do that each time you make an ajax call. if you're using jquery, you can bind a function which update the hash each time an ajax call is made.
if you choose that you'll have to look for the hash on page load (actually don't know/think you can do that server side) and make that call to have your page on the state corresponding to the hash.
-- update
there is now an API which provide this functionality look for history.pushState, history.replaceState and window.onpopstate : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history#Adding_and_modifying_history_entries
it's not availlable everywhere yet ( http://caniuse.com/#feat=history ), there is a few polyfill that you can use for the moment that will use this API if it's available and fall back using the url hash
Consider this JavaScript library: https://github.com/browserstate/history.js
Use jquery. It can do ajax requests. You cant use window.location because that is made to change the url.