Avoid cgi shared scope - coldfusion

I have a lot of FW/1 controllers which can perform differing functions based on whether the request is a get or post. I have a lot of code that looks like this
if (cgi.request_method == "post") {
I recently installed Commandbox's CodeChecker CLI and I turned it loose on my controllers. I am getting warnings like:
Don't use shared scope variables in a CFC | Standards | Severity: 4
Avoid using shared scope variables from within a CFC as it breaks encapsulation.
Users//jamesmohler/Sites/ColdFusion/P.../messagesController.cfc:13
I have gone back to the FW/1 Reference Manual , and I have noted that it has a function called getCGIRequestMethod()
Question
Have I been testing for POST wrongly all along? What exactly am I being encouraged to avoid?

Short answer
I have replaced
if (cgi.request_method == "post") {
with
if (framework.getCGIRequestMethod() == "post") {
Long answer
FW/1 does tap into other CGI variables, but does not expose them. So there are no similar functions I can tap into.
FW/1 copies the data into
request._fw1 = {
cgiScriptName = CGI.SCRIPT_NAME,
cgiPathInfo = CGI.PATH_INFO,
cgiRequestMethod = CGI.REQUEST_METHOD,
...
Which begs the question of request. scope is better than cgi. scope. I hereby submit it does not because both happen at the time of the processing request. Using cgi. might break encasulation, but I don't think pushing in variables via FW/1's rc. scope desirable. I also don't want to modify FW/1 to capture all cgi variables.

Related

AWS Lambda NodeJS locale/variable isolation

There is a concern about potential problem with reusable variables in aws-lambda.
A user's locale is passed as
Browser cookies => AWS API Gateway => Lambda (NodeJS 6.10)
On the server side localization is implemented with a static variable in a class. Presenting typescript code for clarity but can be done in pure ECMAScript.
Module Language.ts
export default class Language
{
public static Current: LanguageCode = LanguageCode.es;
}
Static Language.Current variable is used across different parts of the application for manual localization and it works perfectly on the client side (react + redux).
Lambda function
import {APIGatewayEvent, Context, Callback} from 'aws-lambda';
import Language from './pathToModule/Language.ts';
export const api = function(event: APIGatewayEvent, context: Context, callback: Callback)
{
Language.Current = event.headers.cookie.locale;
// do the logic here
}
Potential problem
According to AWS documentation NodeJS instances can be reused for different requests. It means that famous concurrent problems have to be considered, e.g.
User 1 calls lambda function. The locale is set to English.
In parallel user 2 calls the same lambda instance. The local is changed to Spanish.
User 1 code continues and reads modified (wrong) locale variable from the shared module Language.
How do you resolve this problem?
For convenience it is good to have only one place for locale change. As I understand the same concern exists for all famous i18n npm packages (i18next, i18n, yahoo i18n, etc).
One of the best practices for Lambda functions is to try and not write code which maintains state.
Here you are initializing the locale based on an initial request and applying it to all future requests, which is inherently flawed even on server based code, forget server less.
To fix this, you will need to initialize the localization library for each request, or at least maintain an in memory lazy map, which you can make use of use the current request's locale to achieve the desired localization.
There are several solutions:
Node JS container is reused only after a function process is finished (callback or error is occurred) (thanks to #idbehold). Thus there is always a unique context per a function call.
Refactor code and pass a locale variable back and force (#Yeshodhan Kulkarni suggestion).
For example, return a function as an intermediate result and use it before calling the result back.
var localizableResult = ...;
var result = localizableResult.Localize(requestedLocale).
If there is a need to use a local stack (kind of a thread context) for other projects there is a npm package node-continuation-local-storage.
Case 1 makes it really simple to use global variables for current locale.

CF extended components suddenly stop working

We have a set of Coldfusion applications that all extended various parts of an application base. I'll provide a bit of code and then explain the issues we are having and see if anyone can shed light on the best way to trouble shoot this:
In our "OnRequestStart" in the app.cfc we have the following line to initiate a user:
if(!structKeyExists(SESSION, 'user'))
SESSION.user = CreateObject("component","cfcs.ds_user");
Then in the ds_user.cfc we call it like so:
component extends="cas.cas_user" displayname="basic_user"{
The application and all its parts run just like they should. However, in a seeming random manner after a while, the application will crash and I have to restart ColdFusion Service to get it running again. The error I get is:
Could not find the ColdFusion component or interface cas.cas_user.
So, for whatever reason after a while, my application decides it cannot find the path to the parent component. The mapping for that cfc is in the application.cfc at the top as so:
THIS.mappings["/cas"] = "#ReplaceNoCase(currpath,ListToArray(THIS.name,'_')[1],'cas30')#assets\cfcs\";
I want to be sure to say this, the application works perfectly as designed for a random amount of time and then it cannot find the parent component and will not find it again until I restart the ColdFusion Service on the server.
I figure this is somehow a memory leak or something, but I have no idea where to start looking to troubleshoot the issue. We have 6 or so other applications that are extended in the same way and work fine and never crash, but this one does.
EDIT: To be more clear on the mappings. Our applications are located:
root.com/app1
root.com/app2
We created mappings to grab cfcs from app2 while in app1 using the method above. The method, while I believe sort of strange, does work in all of our applications.
EDIT: The correct mappings that display for a while are:
/cfcs - D:\www\app1\assets\cfcs
/templates - D:\www\app1\assets\templates
/cas - D:\www\app2\assets\cfcs
/common - D:\www\app3\assets\common_elements
However once the Application goes in "crashed mode", the dump reveals the mappings are as follows:
/cfcs - D:\www\app1\assets\cfcs
/templates - D:\www\app1\assets\templates
/cas - D:\www\app1\assets\cfcs
/common - D:\www\app1\assets\common_elements
And here is how those mappings are defined at the start of the Application.cfc:
currpath = GetDirectoryFromPath(GetCurrentTemplatePath());
THIS.mappings["/templates"] = "#currpath#assets\templates";
THIS.mappings["/cfcs"] = "#currpath#assets\cfcs";
THIS.mappings["/common"] = "#ReplaceNoCase(currpath,ListToArray(THIS.name,'_')[1],'gum')#assets\common_elements\";
THIS.mappings["/cas"] = "#ReplaceNoCase(currpath,ListToArray(THIS.name,'_')[1],'cas30')#assets\cfcs\";
THIS.name = digisign_CAAAFACBFDFFE or
name_var = (arrayLen(meta_array) >= 2) ? meta_array[arrayLen(meta_array) - 1] & '_' : 'root_';
THIS.name = name_var & right(reReplace(hash(getCurrentTemplatePath()), "[^a-zA-Z]","","all"), 64 - len(name_var));
Where could it be failing. It seems the replace statement isn't working and therefore the appname in the path is not being changed from app1 to app2 when setting the mappings. is it possible this is related to this error we are currently working through: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4657868#4657868 We have yet to apply the Update 4 patch on production. However this problem we believe was happening before CF10. And while we have this issue, it only cropped up recently. This application in question has been crashing like this for a long time.
EDIT:
1. I guess when I say "crash" I mean the application gets into a state, where it will not declare the mappings correctly until I restart Coldfusion. I assume the error in our code causes the crash.
2.This is usually where the issue occurs, when doing this check of the SESSION.user var. I believe it has happened as well, it decides it cannot find our datasource. This is rare.
3. At first I thought yes, but actually no, not that many. Throughout our apps we have several names for common mappings. cas common cfcs templates etc. However D:\www\cas is where the application domain.com/cas30 is located. However a legacy version of that app is located at domain.com/cas. The mapping /cas should go to D:\www\cas30\assets\cfcs and works.
4.We have a dev setup and this never happens. (I assumed it was a load issue which is why it doesn't happen on dev). However, our dev environment is structred as so:
D:\www\deva\app1
D:\www\deva\app2
D:\www\devb\app1
D:\www\devb\app2
What we do (which I think is stupid) is we have a file located not in the same dir as the current app. This file is called application_base.cfc. All of the application.cfcs in the other applications extend from this application_base.cfc. They are not extended from other Application.cfc files. (hope that makes sense) In application_base is a init, onrequeststart, and an onerror. I'll post the App.cfc below. Also some setting are read from XML files both in the application base (to determine environment stuff) and at the application level. However we thought that might be causing the issue so the previous developer removed the xml file at the application level.
6.Yes. I'll post the app.cfc and the appbase.cfc so you can view both.
By reinitialize you mean call onapplicationstart or something. Not that I know of.
A few applications we have do:
currpath = GetDirectoryFromPath(GetCurrentTemplatePath());
app_path = ListToArray(currpath,'\');
THIS.name = app_path[ArrayLen(app_path)];
This one does:
meta_array = ListToArray(GetMetaData(this).name,'.');
name_var = (arrayLen(meta_array) >= 2) ? meta_array[arrayLen(meta_array) - 1] & '_' : 'root_';
THIS.name = name_var & right(reReplace(hash(getCurrentTemplatePath()), "[^a-zA-Z]","","all"), 64 - len(name_var));
A few others do this as well. Not sure if it was two different developers or something, but that is the way it is.
Once the app fails, it fails until I restart coldfusion. The app requires login from the domain.com/app page, so (not saying it cant change from request to request) but the request location is always the same where it's failing.
God I wish it wasn't this complex. I recently pulled our current CMS off of alot of this crazy stuff, but we have 7 or 8 applications that are so intertwined with each other and designed to work in dev/prod environments with different paths, its sometimes hard to tell what I can remove and what I can't.
I thought I tried dumping the applicationname from our error handler, but I thought it didn't work unless passed in. I passed through the mappings so I could see them which is how I know digisign is not changing to cas30 like it should in "crash" mode.
I think all the dynamic mappings were so the original developer could just use the same app.cfc template without changing anything. He liked to do stuff like var a = (b) ? (a-c) ? a-f+b : (a+b) ? d : d; : a; h; crap with no comments so it sometimes hard to just read the damn code let alone debug it.
EDIT
I feel like this issue and stackoverflow.com/q/14300915/1229594 issue may be related. I've posted some more details here as well: forums.adobe.com/message/5022377#5022377
First things first: why are you initialising session-oriented stuff in onREQUESTStart()? If you inited that in onSessionStart(), you'd not need to check for its existence every request, which - whilst trivial - is unnecessary overhead, and is simply the wrong code in the wrong place.
Secondly... you quote your error, but don't say where it's happening. Is it happening in that line in onRequestStart()?
If so, do me a favour: put a try/catch around it, and within that write the value of this.mappings to a log file, as well as the value of currPath. How is the value of that variable being derived, btw?
That said, I think if you just put that session.user init code in the right place, it'll solve your problem.
NB: frame this problem as almost certainly not a memory leak (ie: ColdFusion's fault), but your code doing something you did not anticipate (so... err... your fault ;-). This will help focus better on finding the problem. I'm not having a go at you, but "where is my code wrong" is a better approach than "it's probably something else". And more likely to be correct ;-)
Oh... and what version of CF are you on?
Take a look at this and see if it's relevant to your problem.
https://github.com/Mach-II/Mach-II-Framework/wiki/Application-Specific-Mapping-Workaround
If not, then it could have something to do with application specific mappings of the same name, on the same CF server, with those applications having different application names.
Some questions:
Are you assuming the crash is being caused by the code error, or that the code error is occurring because of the crash?
Is the instantiation of the session user the only line of code that you see these path errors?
Do you have any physical directories in your app that have the same name as the mapping names?
Does this occur in any other environments (dev/test)? Is this a clustered environment?
Are there multiple Application.cfc files extending this same Application.cfc?
Is there any code that is directly calling Application.cfc methods?
Are there any bits of code that cause the application to reinitialize itself?
What is determining the meta_array that is being used to derive the application name?
A few observations:
It seems to me that the application name is getting changed or that some other application is overwriting with the same name. This doesn't seem far-fetched as there's an awful lot of dynamic naming going on here. Starting with the application name, it's dependent on the current template's physical location, which could be different from request to request, depending on how the app routes requests. If the current template varies, the application name will vary, and cause the other app-specific mappings to change, which would cause a cascading effect to all the other mappings that use the app name to determine the physical location of those mappings.
Which begs the question: Why is all this dynamic evaluation of the application name and mapping locations even necessary? Can it be simplified or hard-coded? Can you instead use a server mapping? If it doesn't have to be this complex, simplifying it to its barest essentials will help troubleshooting and may clear up the issue entirely.
Finally, can you verify that the application name during normal operation is the same application name being referenced when the errors are occurring?
If they are different, then something is causing the application to execute within a different context (see my initial questions above for clues). A sudden change in the application name would invalidate any existing sessions and force the session user instantiation code to re-run. And because the user component paths are based in part on the application name, the paths may no longer be correct.
But if the application names are the same between normal operation and crash mode, then most likely the currpath variable is being affected by some part of the application being executed in a different physical path than expected. Since currpath is directly used in determining the rest of the mappings, that could certainly explain why an unexpected path could cause the component to go missing.
Because there are so many variables going into deriving these names, you would be well served to log those variables during normal operation and during crash mode. You'll want to see
GetCurrentTemplatePath()
GetDirectoryFromPath(GetCurrentTemplatePath())
THIS.name
meta_array
THIS.mappings
I suspect you'll find something significantly different in these variables when operating normally and when the crash/errors are occurring, and that difference should lead you closer to the answer.

coldfusion with memcached client returning error after 270 or so calls

My question seems to be related to this one:
Coldfusion memcached connections
however, i have been unable to solve it.
if i put this code in application.cfm:
<cfif not IsDefined("application.memcached")>
<cfset application.memcachedFactory = createObject("component","memcachedFactory").init("192.168.2.91:11211")>
<cfset application.memcached = application.memcachedFactory.getmemcached()>
</cfif>
the page will work for maybe 270 calls. then it will start to fail with an error "Object Instantiation Exception " The code is properly talking to memcached. I can send and receive data. it seems like java is running out of something .. threads, sockets, handles of some sort. I know little about java, and am stuck.
This seems wrong to me Don. Why would this code run again after the very first call? It should be running 1 time after which you have a reference to your object. What does the rest of your application.cfm look like? Have you added a cfapplication tag with a "name"?
If you fail to set an application "name" (via the cfapplication tag or "this.name" in application.cfc), the an "application.x" variable is treated just like a regular variable. After the page request ends it will "go away" and require the next request to reinstantiate the object over again.
The purpose of the "isDefined()" in this case is to insure it runs only once - providing you with a singleton (single reference) you can use again and again without reinstantiating it. It sounds like you are not "inside" an application.

Flash Builder (Mobile) - Dynamic Web Service URL

For my Flash Builder 4.6 Project I have a http service defined which looks at a url from our website.
What I'd like to be able to do though is to change the web service url on the fly within the app. i.e. using the existing url as default but having an admin/settings screen to change where the web service points (either stored in our sqlite database or in local memory).
This would be so that we could allow our customers to host their own version of the website/database but still be able to use/download the app through the app stores.
Has anyone had any experience with doing this?
EDIT: Adding some more details after the comments below.
When I created the HTTP Service through the FlashBuilder wizard it creates two web service classes a super class and a sub class which inherits from the super class. All of the code that the wizard populates goes into the super class.
I can assume that the code I need to put in would be in the sub class. But I do not know which function I'd put it in or how.
Below is a sample of the Super's constructor:
// initialize service control
_serviceControl = new mx.rpc.http.HTTPMultiService("websitehere");
var operations:Array = new Array();
var operation:mx.rpc.http.Operation;
var argsArray:Array;
operation = new mx.rpc.http.Operation(null, "loginRequest");
operation.url = "login.php";
operation.method = "GET";
argsArray = new Array("un","pw");
operation.argumentNames = argsArray;
operation.serializationFilter = serializer0;
operation.properties = new Object();
operation.properties["xPath"] = "/";
operation.contentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
operation.resultType = valueObjects.Data;
operations.push(operation);
_serviceControl.operationList = operations;
I'm not sure what property of the _serviceControl variable I would need to alter.
Also when I search for my website in my code it brings back a .fml file inside a .model directory which seems to get auto refreshed if I change the service url through the wizard. Would this not cause an issue?
I then have the challenge of accessing the user defined url. Within the app we use an sqlite database to store data but I think it would probably be better to use a 'SharedObject' which we also use to know what account they are logged into. How reliable is this? I assume I would be able to access this via the Service?
Though the awkward thing is that we were planning to have this configurable on a settings screen that would have been accessed after logging in. But to log in it would already need to know which server to point to.
if im reading your question correctly then your main ambition is to dynamically change the url for the services based on a user defined variable.
This is very easy to accomplish and even easier to accomplish if you are using parsley / spicelib.
a few points
dont change the code in the super file, this will get overwritten whenever the service gets refreshed. change everything in its generated sub-Class.
Shared Objects are very good for small quantities of data but should never be used for massive datasets i.e storing a big arraycollection.
Anyway here is how i achieve this.
In the SubClass you can change the constructor function.
Here is how i change my urls based on a config variable but you can just as easily use a SharedObject instead.
public function SubClassConstructor(){
if(CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "development" || CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "dev" || CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "d"){
_serviceControl.endpoint = "http://yoururl1";
}
else if(CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "production" || CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "prod" || CONFIG::DOMAIN_IDENT == "p"){
_serviceControl.endpoint = "http://yoururl2";
}
}
Of course this isn't exactly what your looking for but its a working solution, of course you can use Bindings to a Global ApplicationModel or direct reference to the SharedObject i guess you already know how to use the SharedObject.
Ask if you need any further help or guidance.
As cghrmauritius' solution didn't quite work for me, I am posting up the final solution that did work in my situation.
public function subConstructor()
{
super();
_serviceControl.baseURL = "http://url1";
}
Obviously for my final solution I need to implement the shareobject as well but overriding the url was my main priority.

NullPointerExceptions in ColdFusion 9 and ColdBox on localhost

I'm running CF 9.0.1 Developer and Coldbox 3.0.0 on my local machine (64-bit Windows Vista running 32-bit CF9 on Apache). I'm working on an application that I've checked out from SVN and deployed locally. Everything seems to be working correctly, but my application log is filling up with entries like this:
Apr 18, 2011 12:41 PM Error jrpp-7
exception.log has an extremely long stack trace for each exception, maybe 150 lines or so. It starts with this:
"Error","jrpp-4","04/18/11","11:07:30",,""
java.lang.NullPointerException
at coldfusion.util.Utils.getServletPath(Utils.java:86)
at coldfusion.util.Utils.getServletPath(Utils.java:76)
at coldfusion.util.Utils.getBaseTemplatePath(Utils.java:405)
at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateProxyFactory.getTemplateFileHelper
(TemplateProxyFactory.java:1522)
at coldfusion.runtime.MetadataUtils.getComponentMetadata
(MetadataUtils.java:112)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.GetComponentMetaData(CfJspPage.java:2667)
at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateProxy.getRuntimeComponentMetadata
(TemplateProxy.java:1756)
at coldfusion.runtime.TemplateProxy.getRuntimeMetadata
(TemplateProxy.java:1617)
at coldfusion.runtime.MetadataUtils.getMetaData(MetadataUtils.java:54)
at coldfusion.runtime.CfJspPage.GetMetaData(CfJspPage.java:2640)
at cfEventHandler2ecfc862260423$funcPOSTLOAD.runFunction
(C:\ColdFusion9\wwwroot\ybocv5\coldbox\system\orm\hibernate
\EventHandler.cfc:30)
This is a version of an app that has been running in production, and what makes me think this is just on my local version is the appearance of this in the stack trace:
at cfdump2ecfm471394032$funcRENDEROUTPUT.runFunction
(E:\cf9_updates_rc\cfusion\wwwroot\WEB-INF\cftags\dump.cfm:704)
...
at cfCollectionPanel2ecfm961210602.runPage
(C:\ColdFusion9\wwwroot\ybocv5\coldbox\system\includes
\panels\CollectionPanel.cfm:40)
We don't use cfdump in production; this looks like ColdBox is trying to display a complex object in a debugger panel and failing.
The only thing I found online so far was this thread in Google's transfer-dev group ... someone who saw a bunch of similar errors and thought maybe it was a CF9 bug. The only reply with any sort of solution was this one, suggesting a fix that seems to be Transfer-specific.
Does anyone know what might be causing these errors? It's not as important to me to fix them as it would be on a production app, but if I'm spamming my logs with these errors, it's hard to find legitimate errors when they do occur.
Update: I've been working with the CollectionPanel.cfm template to identify the root cause, and the exception is consistently thrown here:
<cfelseif isObject(varVal)>
<!--- this cfdump is the guilty party ... --->
<cfdump var="#varVal#" expand="false" top="2">
<cfelse>
I've tried wrapping the cfdump in a try-catch, but the exception is thrown anyway, always from that same line of code. This makes sense, I guess, given that these errors don't have any visible effect on the pages on which they occur.
It appears to not be caused from a <cfdump> instead from a GetMetaData() call.
Specifically when you get the meta data of a cfc, which extends another cfc which has been modified after the current has been compiled (and where GetMetaData has been run) where it needs to update the extends struct in the GetMetaData() return. Cf only generates the meta data struct once, most likely for performance reasons.
I think it might be a bug in cf...
Inside the TemplateProxyFactory.getTemplateFileHelper() it's calling runtime.resolveTemplatePath(compName + ".cfc") where compName is name.replace('.', '/')
All good and well until you use a mapping. If you straight out replace dots with slashes, you'll need to add a leading slash, just like they do in TemplateProxy.getMetaData()
Without the leading slash, resolveTemplatePath() returns null, which triggers the VFSFileFactory.getFileObject() call which tries to get a File object from the parent cfc name.
Before it even gets to the VFSFileFactory, it calls Util.getBaseTemplatePath() with the pageContext. Inside it gets the ServletContext from the pageContext and tries to call getServletPath() so that it can get its real path. Utils.getServletPath() tries to get the attribute "javax.servlet.include.servlet_path" which on my machine (and probably yours) doesn't exist and returns null.
You can check by calling this: isNull(getPageContext().getRequest().getRequest().getAttribute("javax.servlet.include.servlet_path")); - yes, there is supposed to be two .getRequest() calls in there.
So it seems Cf is trying to refresh it's extends struct in a cfc getMetaData() call when the extended file is modified and does it a different way then when it first generated the struct.
In you cf admin, what are you settings under Server Settings > Caching?
Trusted cache? Cache template in request? Component cache? Save class files? Cache web server paths?