Getting HttpRequest from SignalR Hub - signalr

I have a web site with SignalR Hub (and jQuery code at the client for connecting).
I need to get the HttpRequest object for authentication.
The signalR have a Context.Request object(which is Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Owin.ServerRequest) but I can't find the way to convert it into an HttpRequest.
Does any one have an idea how to perform that?
Edit:
As it turns out, you can always go to HttpContext.Current and use the Request/Response object. But be careful, Not all reqular operations are supported, some of them will result in ThreadAborted Exception

Related

Web API 'in memory' requests throw exception

Ok, my situation is much more complicated but there is an easy way to reproduce. Starting with a fresh new ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application project and selecting Web API as a template I just add a second mvc action to the HomeController where I need to call Web API internally.
public async Task<string> TestAPI()
{
HttpServer server = new HttpServer(GlobalConfiguration.Configuration);
using (HttpMessageInvoker messageInvoker = new HttpMessageInvoker(server, false))
{
HttpRequestMessage request = new HttpRequestMessage(HttpMethod.Get, "http://localhost:58233/api/values");
request.Headers.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));
var response = messageInvoker.SendAsync(request, new CancellationToken()).Result;
return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
}
//server.Dispose(); - if I do that on the second request I get a "Cannot access a disposed object." exception
}
that thing works only on the first request. On subsequent requests it throws with
The 'DelegatingHandler' list is invalid because the property
'InnerHandler' of 'RequestMessageHandlerTracer' is not null. Parameter
name: handlers
I really need to use the GlobalConfiguration.Configuration here since my system is very modular/plugin based, which makes it really hard to reconstruct that configuration within the action method(or anywhere else).
I would suggest trying to re-use the HttpServer instance on secondary requests. Creating and configuring a new server on every request is not an expected usage and you are likely hitting some edge case. Either setup a DI mechanism and inject into your controller a singleton of the HttpServer, or try accessing it from some static property.
I also would suggest using new HttpClient(httpServer) instead of HttpMessageInvoker.
The same issue can occur in Web API, if you have multiple HttpServers using the same configuration object, and the configuration contains a non-empty list of delegating handlers.
The error occurs because MVC/Web API builds a pipeline of handlers on first request, containing all the delegating handlers (eg RequestMessageHandlerTracer if request tracing is enabled) linked to each other, followed by the MVC server handler.
If you have multiple HttpServers using the same configuration object, and the config object contains delegating handlers, the first HttpServer will be successfully connected into a pipeline; but the second one won't, because the delegating handlers are already connected - instead it will throw this exception on first request/initialization.
More detail on the Web API case here (which is conceptually identical, but uses different classes and would have a slightly different fix):
webapi batching and delegating handlers
In my opinion, the MVC configuration classes should be pure config, and not contain actual delegating handlers. Instead, the configuration classes should create new delegating handlers upon initialization. Then this bug wouldn't exist.

How do I trap a SerializationException in Web API?

I have an ASP.NET Web API web service which throws a SerializationException in certain circumstances. The problem is that I'm unable to trap and log this exception server-side -- the only place it shows up is in the body of the HTTP response to the client.
I registered an ExceptionFilterAttribute as described in Exception Handling in ASP.NET Web API and verified that it works properly when I throw an exception within my controller. Unfortunately the SerializationException is being thrown during the response (after the controller) and appears to be completely swallowed up by ASP.NET. I also tried hooking Application_Error() in Global.asax.cs but it didn't show up there either.
How can I catch SerializationException exceptions during the Web API response?
If, instead of returning an object, you use the ApiController.CreateResponse() method and return a HttpResponseMessage you can then do response.Content.LoadIntoBufferAsync().Wait() and that will force the serialization to happen whilst you are still in the action and therefore can catch the exception.
BTW, Serialization of responses actually happens at the host layers(in HttpControllerHandler, when hosted in IIS and in HttpSelfhostServer, when hosted in SelfHost) which is way below the stack and not immediately after the response is returned from an action.
WebAPI Stack Poster: http://www.asp.net/posters/web-api/ASP.NET-Web-API-Poster-grayscale.pdf
That said, I am not able to come up with a straight forward way to achieve this. This is cumbersome, but may be override the default Xml and Json formatter's WriteToStreamAsync methods and try-catch-log any exceptions?
Alternatively, you can enable Web API Tracing which would log the exceptions happening during serialization. But yeah, if you do not know for the requests which cause the serialization errors, then you might want to enable tracing all the time which i am not sure is something you might want to do.
You can catch all Web API exceptions by registering an implementation of IExceptionHandler.
See Web API Global Error Handling
...there are a number of cases that exception filters can’t handle. For example:
Exceptions thrown from controller constructors.
Exceptions thrown from message handlers.
Exceptions thrown during routing.
Exceptions thrown during response content serialization .
One thing not mentioned in that article is that your IExceptionHandler must be registered, either by GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Add(...) or via an IoC container configured to be used by DependencyResolver.

Isolating specific browser instance with SignalR

We are building an app which will send messages to the browser using SignalR. The user may have multiple browser instances open and we would like each message to be sent to the appropriate browser. Our understanding is that the ClientId ConnectionId would allow us to do this. The issue we're running into is accessing the ClientId ConnectionId, or SessionId, at the appropriate times in the codebase. Here's our scenario:
A MVC Action executes and, as part of that processing, a call to a Biztalk endpoint is made. The Biztalk execution is out of process (from the point of view of the MVC Action) and doesn't return when completed. This is by design. To notify the MVC application that it has completed, Biztalk sends a message to the MVC application's SignalR hub by calling the /myapp/signalr endpoint. The message is received by SignalR and then should be routed to the appropriate browser instance.
Since the message to SignalR is being sent by Biztalk, and not the MVC application, the ClientId of the connection to SignalR is not the one that identifies the browser instance that should receive the message. So what we are attempting to implement is somethign similar to the Return Address pattern by including the ClientId ConnectionId of the browser instance that initiates the Biztalk call in the message to Biztalk. When Biztalk sends its message to SignalR one of the contents is that original ClientId ConnectionId value. When SignalR processes the message from Biztalk it then can use the ClientId ConnectionId included in the message to route that message to the appropriate browser instance. (Yes we know that this won't work if the browser has been closed and re-opened and we're fine with that.)
The problem we face is that when initially sending the message to Biztalk from our MVC Action we cannot access the ClientId ConnectionId as it's only available in the Hub's Context. This is understandable since the MVC Action doesn't know which Hub context to look for.
What we have tried in it's place is to pass the SessionId through the Biztalk message and return it to SignalR. This solves the problem of including the browser instance identifier in the Biztalk message and returning it to SignalR. What it introduces is the fact that when a client connects to the Hub we cannot access the Session (and thus the SessionId) in the Hub's OnConnect method.
David Fowler posted a gist that reportedly shows how to make readonly SessionState accessible in a Hub but it doesn't work. (https://gist.github.com/davidfowl/4692934) As soon as we add this code into our application messages sent to SignalR cause a HTTP 500 error which is caused by SignalR throwing the following exception.
[ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null.Parameter name: s]
System.IO.StringReader..ctor(String s) +10688601
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Json.JsonNetSerializer.Parse(String json, Type targetType) +77
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Json.JsonSerializerExtensions.Parse(IJsonSerializer serializer, String json) +184
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hubs.HubRequestParser.Parse(String data) +101
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.Hubs.HubDispatcher.OnReceived(IRequest request, String connectionId, String data) +143
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.<>c__DisplayClassc.<ProcessRequest>b__7() +96
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.<>c__DisplayClass3c.<FromMethod>b__3b() +41
Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR.TaskAsyncHelper.FromMethod(Func`1 func) +67
No matter the mode that we set SessionStateBehavior (as shown by David Fowler's gist) we either get this exception when sending a message to the Hub or SessionState is null when we are in the Hub's OnConnect.
So, after all that pre-amble, what we are asking is how do people update the appropriate client when working with this type of disconnected messaging in SignalR?
If you're looking to send data to clients outside of a normal request to a hub then I'd recommend having a static Concurrent Dictionary on your hub that manages your users and maps them to corresponding connection Id's.
With this approach you can send to any user at any point based on their mapped Connection Id. Therefore when sending your data to Biztalk all you need to do is send your user id (created by you) and then when the data flows back to SignalR you can lookup the ConnectionId (if one exists) for that given user id.
Lastly, you can manage your user mappings by adding users to your concurrent dictionary in OnConnected, adding only if they are not there in OnReconnected, and removing in OnDisconnected.

ASP.NET Web Service validating incoming XML

I have ASP.NET 4 Web Service (asmx). I use IXmlSerializable interface for manually serialization/deserialization. In the function ReadXml (part of IXmlSerializable) I use functin XmlReader.ReadString and if client send me invalidate XML this function throw exception. How I validate incoming XMl before deserialization? Because exception is very hard operation for perfomance.
put the deserializatin in a try catch block and handle exception in catch. there is no point in validating xml upfront as it might through an exception when you attempt to validate as well.

HttpContext.Current is null when checked on interceptor

My asp.net application have form authentication. When user logs in, he is redirected to a new page abc.aspx. On this page, in javascript, on document.ready, a service call is made to some service which have AspNetCompatibilityMode on. In the interceptor of the service, I try to find the HttpContext.Current but when its the first request to the application, interceptor does not get HttpContext.Current and is found null. After that, its never null but only on the first request to the application.
If you use WCF, in the wcf there is no HttpContext.Current. You have to use the InstanceContextMode of the Service class in the Session.
Correctly said by Peer, there is no HttpContext in WCF. You may use OperationContext.Current.RequestContext
You would have to follow below link
http://www.danrigsby.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/23/understanding-instancecontext-in-wcf/

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