Get currentUser inside a Lift RestHelper - http

Question

Could anyone please help me to retreive the authenticated user who initiated a REST call? I'm using Lift with the RestHelper
In my Boot.scala I have the following:
LiftRules.httpAuthProtectedResource.prepend {
case Req(List("api", "incomingCall", incomingCall), _, GetRequest) => Full(AuthRole("admin"))
}
LiftRules.authentication = HttpBasicAuthentication("lift") {
case (username, password, req) => {
User.find(By(User.firstName, username)) match {
case Full(user) if user.password.match_?(password) => {
userRoles(AuthRole("admin"))
User.logUserIn(user) //I tried with and without this line
true
}
case x => {
false
}
}
}
}
LiftRules.dispatch.append(IncomingCallRest)
And my IncomingCallRest.scala file looks like this:
object IncomingCallRest extends RestHelper {
serve {
case "api" :: "incomingCall" :: incomingCall :: _ JsonGet _ => {
val currentUser = User.currentUser openOr User; //<--- On this line I'm trying to access the User, but it returns a blank user
val messageWithUser = (incomingCall, currentUser.userIdAsString)
ChatServer ! messageWithUser
JString(incomingCall)
}
}
}
User.currentUser does not return the authenticated user.
As you might see my code is based on the ChatServer example. I'm making the same call to User.currentUser from ChatIn.scala and there it works.
Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The creator of Lift suggested the following in an old thread:
Sessions are not initialized this early in the HTTP request/response
cycle. However, RequestVars are. My suggestion is to put User into a
RequestVar and then in your API module, read the RequestVar and put it into
a SessionVar.
I changed my code as follows to implement his suggestions:
//IncomingCallRest.scala
object userIdRequestVar extends RequestVar[String]("Default") //This RequestVar is set in Boot.scala
object IncomingCallRest extends RestHelper {
serve {
case "api" :: "incomingCall" :: incomingCall :: _ JsonGet _ => {
val messageWithUser = (incomingCall, userIdRequestVar.is)
ChatServer ! messageWithUser
JString(incomingCall)
}
}
}
//Boot.scala
LiftRules.authentication = HttpBasicAuthentication("lift") {
case (username, password, req) => {
User.find(By(User.firstName, username)) match {
case Full(user) if user.password.match_?(password) => {
userRoles(AuthRole("admin"))
userIdRequestVar.set(user.userIdAsString) //Set the RequestVar
true
}
case x => {
false
}
}
}
}