Custom response headers not sent by server (Rails Devise) - http

I'm trying to retrieve 3 response headers (Rails Devise Auth Headers: uid, client, access-token) in every request to a Rails Server.
Using Postman (http client) it's working.
With OkHttp (java http client) the headers just don't show up in the client (i've checked using Wireshark).
When i'm in debug mode it just work...

The additional headers with postman are due to postman sending an Origin header and the server is replying with CORS headers, i.e. Access-Control-.... These headers are send within the normal HTTP header, i.e. not after the response.
But these access control headers are only relevant when the access is done from a browser because they control the cross origin behavior of XHR. Since you are not inside a browser they should be irrelevant for what you are doing. What is relevant are the body of the response and some of the other headers and here you'll find no differences. Also irrelevant should be if multiple requests are send within the same TCP connection (HTTP keep-alive done by postman) or with multiple connections (OkHttp) because each request is independent from the other and using the same TCP connection is only a performance optimization.
If you really want to get these special headers you should add an Origin header within you OkHttp request. See the OkHttp examples on how to add your own headers. But like I said: these access control headers should be irrelevant for the real task and there should be no need to get to these headers.

There is a property "config.batch_request_buffer_throttle" in the file "config/initializers/devise_token_auth.rb" of the Rails Project. We changed it from 5 seconds to 0 seconds.
It is a property to keep the current token available for that amount of time to the following requests.
As the original documentation: "Sometimes it's necessary to make several requests to the API at the same time. In this case, each request in the batch will need to share the same auth token. This setting determines how far apart the requests can be while still using the same auth token."
So when we did the request using Postman or in Java Debug the 5 seconds was running allowing Devise to generate new tokens then retrieve them to the client.

Related

jmeter -not adding authorization header to all http requests

i have a fairly simple testplan with following steps recorded
Thread Group
Recording Controller
HTTP Authorization manager
GET https://xxxx/user/login
GET https://xxxx/accounts/list
GET https://xxxx/user/settings
GET https://xxxx/partners/list
GET https://xxxx/user/logout
When i run this, i see jmeter adding the authorization header in the first user/login request and server responds with 200 OK. This is OK
i extract the session token from the login response and put it as a variable into the subsequent http requests.
jmeter is not adding the authorization header in the subsequent accounts/list request - this is OK
but then jmeter is adding the authorization header into the subsequent user/settings request - this is not needed as it defeats the purpose of sending the session token.
Again jmeter is not sending the auth token in partners/list but is sending it again in user/logout request.
So question is how jmeter determines when to add the auth header and when not?
The desired behaviour i want is for jmeter to send the auth header in the first user/login request but not in any of the subsequent http requests.
Any pointers appreciated.
thanks
HTTP Authorization Manager will add Authorization header to all the HTTP Request samplers it its scope, if you place it at the same level with the HTTP Request samplers - it will add the header to all of them.
If you need to apply the HTTP Authorization Manager to 1st sampler only - move it to be the child of the first sampler.
More information: JMeter Scoping Rules - The Ultimate Guide
Recording any scenario adds up the Header Manager in all the Http requests.
You are doing it in correct way, however still you have to make few changes in your scripts to run seamlessly.
Delete all the subsequent Header Manager under the accounts/list,user/settings,partners/list & logout.
Post the Login Request > extract the session > Add a Header Manager after Login request and pass the session there.
All the further request should be in the same thread so that the session get passed to each request.
Also while recording there are multiple requests that gets captured and for each scenario Jmeter maintains the session under Header Manager, hence this should never be the case that one request is getting the session while others not.
Thanks for the answer that helps.
What i did and worked well in the mean time is add an explicit authorization header to the user/login request with a beanshell preprocessor to base64 encode the username / password.
thanks anyways

Which http request headers are required for client?

Which of the http request headers are required for a client to get the correct response from server?
Does it depend on server back-end?
I've come up with situations in which setting all request headers(just like browser does) gave me improper responses and i had to cross some out.
If all request headers are required, does it mean http helper libraries in programming languages set some default values? If not, is there a better solution than error-and-trail?

JMeter http request DELETE with body

I have proprietary http based API to test from JMeter. Unfortunately some of the endpoints of the API are expecting http DELETE method with a request body (I know its questionable API design to use DELETE with request body, but I have no ability to change that API and need to test it).
How can I test it from JMeter? It seems that standard HttpRequest sampler silently ignores my body payload without any warnings. (When I try it in POSTMAN its sending a request body for DELETE method)
I did find an old JMeter plugin called HTTP Raw Request that somewhat helps but still doesn't auto-calculate "Content-Length:" http header for my body payload...so I have to do it manually for every test case - which is a pain for dynamically generated data payloads.
So my question still remains: How can I test HTTP DELETE with request body from JMeter?
Here is the screenshot:
NOTE1: Starting from jMeter ver. 3.1 (see bugzilla #60358) it was fixed for Http GET request to be able to send body in the request...but DELETE was not added.
NOTE2: See bugzilla #61443 for the DELETE request with body.
NOTE3: I'm using client implementation called "Java".
As per reference docs:
http://jmeter.apache.org/usermanual/component_reference.html#HTTP_Request
There are 2 implementations for http request sampler. The non default one called "Java" has this issue with not passing DELETE request body.
Luckily the default implementation called "HttpClient4" that correctly passes request payload for DELETE operation as per JMeter data entry screen.
To change implementations for http request sampler you have to go to "advanced" tab of the HTTP Request Sampler and select client implementation "HttpClient4" instead of "Java". Here is the screenshot:
After that when executed it correctly sends request payload for DELETE operation. Here is the screenshot:

Generating HTTP Request

In how many ways can an HTTP request be generated?
There are endless ways how you can create and from where you can send HTTP requests to a server. Actually your server has no idea, what the origin of such a request is (if it's AJAX or "regular" request, or sent from a console application or ...)
But there are HTTP methods (HTTP verbs) that (can) tell the server about the intent of the request: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Verbs#Request_methods
Also you can set headers in a request, for example the content-type or the accepted encoding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_header_fields
Most JavaScript libraries for example set the (non-standard) HTTP header X-Requested-With, so your application can differentiate between regular and ajax requests.
You see, it's even possible to set your own, non-standard headers. There are endless possible combinations...
HttpRequest is a C# class that wraps a petition sent by a client during a Web request.
There are many ways to generate it. The most usual one happens when your browser connects to an ASP.NET website.
You can, for example, create your own custom HttpRequest to petition a specific web page from a C# console application.
Are you trying to achieve something more specific?

Does sending POST data to a server that doesn't accept post data recieve the data?

I am setting up a back end API in a script of mine that contacts one of my sites by sending XML to my web server in the form of POST data. This script will be used by many and I want to limit the bandwidth waste for people that accidentally turn the feature on without a proper access key.
I will be denying requests that do not have the correct access key by maybe generating a 403 access code.
Lets say the POST data is ~500kb of data. Does the server receive all 500kb of data when this attempt is made regardless of the status code?
How about if I made the url contain the key mydomain/api/123456789 and generate 403 status on all bad access keys.
Does the POST data still get sent/received regardless or is it negotiated before the data is finally sent.
Thanks in advance!
Generally speaking, the entire request will be sent, including post data. There is often no way for the application layer to return a response like a 403 until it has received the entire request.
In reality, it will depend on the language/framework used and how closely it is linked to the HTTP server. Section 8.2.2 of RFC2616 HTTP/1.1 specification has this to say
An HTTP/1.1 (or later) client sending
a message-body SHOULD monitor the
network connection for an error status
while it is transmitting the request.
If the client sees an error status, it
SHOULD immediately cease transmitting
the body. If the body is being sent
using a "chunked" encoding (section
3.6), a zero length chunk and empty trailer MAY be used to prematurely
mark the end of the message. If the
body was preceded by a Content-Length
header, the client MUST close the
connection.
So, if you can find a language environemnt closely linked with the HTTP server (for example, mod_perl), you could do this in a way which does comply with standards.
An alternative approach you could take is to make an initial, smaller request to obtain a URL to use for the larger POST. The application can then deny providing the URL to clients without an appropriate key.
Here is great book about RESTful Web Services, where it's explained how HTTP works: http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529260
You can consider any request as envelope, where on top of it it's written address (URL), some properties (HTTP Headers) and inside it there's some data (if request is initiated by post method). So as you might guess you can't receive envelope partially.
Oh I forgot, it's when you are using HTTP Post with standard HTTP header "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" but if you are uploading files (correspondingly using ""multipart/form-data") Django gives you control over streamed chunks of files using Middleware classes: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/middleware/

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