I have a custom button which is to query and possibly update an Administration App in Quickbase, which the current user doesn't require access to.
I have JS code which is executed on a button click by the user to check the admin app, etc...
my API call to check the app has the appropriate apptoken and usertoken. However, the browser still has the current user's session cached, so the API call errors out with an access denied error message.
I'm looking for either a way to make a hidden incognito window, to then execute this code, or a way to problematically force the usertoken to supersede the current user access/permissions.
I've seen where chrome extensions can use chrome.windows.create... but I have no experience with extensions, and Ideally, I don't want to have to have an extension for just this functionality, and have to possibly install it on every user's PC for this to work...
Here is a snippet of my current code... This code does work if someone has permissions to the Administration App... but this code is residing in a different application:
PreProcURL = "https://<domain>.quickbase.com/db/<dbid>?a=API_DoQuery&apptoken=<>&usertoken=<>&query={'3'.EX.'1'}";
PreProcQuery.open('GET', PreProcURL, 'async');
PreProcQuery.send();
PreProcQuery.onload = function(){
console.log(PreProcQuery.responseXML);
RunBit = (PreProcQuery.responseXML.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("runbit"))[0].innerHTML;
SupportData = (PreProcQuery.responseXML.documentElement.getElementsByTagName("supportdata"))[0].innerHTML;
if(RunBit != "1"){
$.get("https://<domain>.quickbase.com/db/<dbid>?a=API_EditRecord&rid=1&_fid_6=1&_fid_7="+rid+"&apptoken=<>&usertoken=<>");
}else{
if(SupportData == rid){
alert("This PreProc File is already in progress... please wait.");
}else{
alert("Another PreProc is already in progress... please wait.");
}
}
};
Thanks in advance for any assistance on this.
API calls executed in JavaScript that is hosted within quickbase.com (button, pages, etc.) will run as that logged in user that triggered the script. The usertoken gets ignored.
The most common way to accomplish what you are after is to write the API_DoQuery code on a server side location and then trigger it from your JS code.
I am building a simple support chat for my website using Ajax. I would like to check if the user that I am currently chatting with left the browser.
At the moment I have build in that feature by setting interval function at customer side that creates the file with name: userId.txt
In the admin area I have created an interval function that checks if userId.txt exists. If it exists, it deletes it. If the file is not recreated by the custom interval function - next time the admin function will find out that file is not there it mark customer with this userId as inactive.
Abstract representation:
customer -> interval Ajax function -> php [if no file - create a new file]
admin -> interval Ajax function -> php [if file exists - delete the file] -> return state to Ajax function and do something
I was wondering if there is any better way to implement this feature that you can think of?
My solution is to use the jquery ready and beforeunload methods to trigger an ajax post request that will notify when the user arrives and leaves.
This solution is "light" because it only logs twice per user.
support.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.3/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script>
//log user that just arrived - Page loaded
$(document).ready(function() {
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: 'log.php',
async:false,
data: {userlog:"userid arrived"}
});
});
//log user that is about to leave - window/tab will be closed.
$(window).bind('beforeunload', function(){
$.ajax({
type: 'POST',
url: 'log.php',
async:false,
data: {userlog:"userid left"}
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Your support html code...</h2>
</body>
</html>
log.php
<?php
//code this script in a way that you get notified in real time
//in this case, I just log to a txt file
$userLog = $_POST['userlog'];
file_put_contents("userlog.txt", $userLog."\n", FILE_APPEND );
//userid arrived
//userid left
Notes:
1 - Tested on Chrome, FF and Opera. I don't have a mac so I couldn't test it on Safari but it should work too.
2 - I've tried the unload method but it wasn't as reliable as beforeunload.
3 - Setting async to false on the ajax request means that the statement you are calling has to complete before the next statement, this ensures that you'll get notified before the window/tab is closed.
#Gonzalon makes a good point but using a normal DB table or the filesystem for constantly updating user movement would be exhaustive to most hard disks. This would be a good reason for using shared memory functions in PHP.
You have to differentiate a bit between the original question "How do i check in real-time, if a user is logged in?" and "How can i make sure, if a user is still on the other side (in my chat)?".
For a "login system" i would suggest to work with PHP sessions.
For the "is user still there" question, i would suggest to update one field of the active session named LAST_ACTIVITY. It is necessary to write a timestamp with the last contact with the client into a store (database) and test whether that is older than X seconds.
I'm suggesting sessions, because you have not mentioned them in your question and it looks like you are creating the userID.txt file manually on each Ajax request, right? Thats not needed, unless working cookie and session-less is a development requirement.
Now, for the PHP sessions i would simply change the session handler (backend) to whatever scales for you and what makes requesting information easy.
By default PHP uses the session temp folder to create session files,
but you might change it, so that the underlying session handler becomes a mariadb database or memcache or rediska.
When the users sessions are stored into a database you can query them: "How many users are now logged in?", "Who is where?".
The answer for "How can I check in real time if a user is logged in?" is, when the user session is created and the user is successfully authenticated.
For real-time chat application there are a lot of technologies out there, from "php comet", "html5 eventsource" + "websockets" / "long polling" to "message queues", like RabbitMq/ActiveMq with publish/subscribe to specific channels.
If this is a simple or restricted environment, maybe a VPS, then you can still stick to your solution of intervalic Ajax requests. Each request might then update $_SESSION['LAST_ACTIVITY'] with a server-side timestamp. Referencing: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1270960/1163786
A modification to this idea would be to stop doing Ajax requests, when the mouse movement stops. If the user doesn't move the mouse on your page for say 10 minutes, you would stop updating the LAST_ACTIVITY timestamp. This would fix the problem of showing users who are idle as being online.
Another modification is to reduce the size of the "iam still here" REQUEST to the server by using small GET or HEADER requests. A short HEADER "ping" is often enough, instead of sending long messages or JSON via POST.
You might find a complete "How to create an Ajax Web Chat with PHP, jQuery" over here. They use a timeout of 15 seconds for the chat.
Part 1 http://tutorialzine.com/2010/10/ajax-web-chat-php-mysql/
Part 2 http://tutorialzine.com/2010/10/ajax-web-chat-css-jquery/
You can do it this way, but it'll be slow, inefficient, and probably highly insecure. Using a database would be a noticeable improvement, but even that wouldn't be particularly scalable, depending on how "real-time" you want this to be and how many conversations you want it to be able to handle simultaneously.
You'd be much better off using a NoSQL solution such as Redis for any actions that you'll need to run frequently (ie: "is user online" checks, storing short-term conversation updates, and checking for conversation updates at short intervals).
Then you'd use the database for more long-term tasks like storing user information and saving active conversations at regular intervals (maybe once per minute, for example).
Why Ajax and not Websockets? Surely a websocket would give you a considerably faster chat system, wouldn't require generating and checking a text file, would not involve a database lookup and you can tell instantly if the connection is dropped.
I would install the https://github.com/nrk/predis library. So at the time the user authenticates, It publishes a message to Redis server.
Then you can set-up a little node server on the back-end - something simple like:
var server = require('http').Server();
var io = require('socket.io')(server);
var Redis = require('ioredis');
var redis = new Redis();
var authenticatedUsers = [];
// Subscribe to the authenticatedUsers channel in Redis
redis.subscribe('authenticatedUsers');
// Logic for what to do when a message is received from Redis
redis.on('message', function(channel, message) {
authenticatedUsers.push(message);
io.emit('userAuthenticated', message);
});
// What happens when a client connects
io.on('connection', function(socket) {
console.log('connection', socket.id);
socket.on('disconnect', function(a) {
console.log('user disconnected', a);
});
});
server.listen(3000);
Far from complete, but something to get you started.
Alternatively, take a look at Firebase. https://www.firebase.com/ if you dont want to bother with the server-side
I would suggest using in built HTML5 session storage for this purpose. This is supported by all modern browsers so we will not face issues for the same.
This will help us to be efficient and quick to recognize if user is online. Whenever user moves mouse or presses keys update session storage with date and time. Check it periodically to see if it is empty or null and decide user left the site.
Depending on your resources you may opt for websockets or the previous method called long pool request. Both ensure a bidirectional communication between the server and the client. But they may be expensive on resources.
Here is an good tutorial on the websocket:
http://www.binarytides.com/websockets-php-tutorial/
I would use a callback that you (admin) can trigger. I use this technique in web app and mobile apps to (All this is set on the user side from the server):
Send a message to user (like: "behave or I ban you").
Update user status/location. (for events to know when attendants is arriving)
Terminate user connections (e.g. force log out if maintenance).
Set user report time (e.g. how often should the user report back)
The callback for the web app is usually in JavaScript, and you define when and how you want the user to call home. Think of it as a service channel.
Instead of creating and deleting files you can do the same thing with cookie benefits of using cookie are
You do not need to hit ajax request to create a file on server as cookies are accessible by javascript/jquery.
Cookies have an option to set the time interval so would automatically delete themselves after a time, so you will not need php script to delete that.
Cookies are accessible by php, so when ever you need to check if user is still active or not, you can simply check if the cookie exist
If it were aspnet I would say signalR... but for php perhaps you could look into Rachet it might help with a lot of what you are trying to accomplish as the messages could be pushed to the clients instead of client polling.
Imo, there is no need for setting up solutions with bidirectional communications. You only want to know if a user is still logged in or attached to the system. If I understand you right, you only need a communication from server to client. So you can try SSE (server sent events) for that. The link gives you an idea, how to implement this with PHP.
The idea is simple. The server knows if user is attached or not. He could send something like "hey, user xyz is still logged in" or "hey, user xzy seems not to be logged in any more" and the client only listens to that messages and can react to the messages (e.g. via JavaScript).
The advantage is: SSE is really good for realtime applications, because the server only has to send data and the client has only to listen, see also the specification for this.
If you really need bidirectional communications or can't go with the two dependencies mentioned in the specs, it's not the best decision to use SSE, of course.
Here is a late Update with a nice chat example (written in Java). Probably it's also good to get an idea how to implement this in PHP.
I'm writing an Applescript utility to login to Facebook, do some simple tasks and then logout. I have everything working except logging out. I want to use Safari and most reliable method recommended has been to call Javascript versus using System Events. I'm open to either way as long as I can log out the user. The logout action is a menulist item which I attempt to locate, however I get "missing value" using this code. You help is greatly appreciated!
tell application "Safari"
if not (exists document 1) then reopen
tell document 1
set URL to "https://www.facebook.com"
delay 3
do JavaScript "document.getElementById('email').value='email-address';
document.getElementById('pass').value='password-value';
document.getElementById('loginbutton').click();
document.getElementById('persist_box').value='0';"
end tell
-- working code --
-- working code
-- Need to logout of this account
tell document 1
set URL to "https://www.facebook.com/logout.php"
delay 3
do JavaScript "document.getElementById('logout_form').childNodes[0].click();"
end tell
end tell
-- from the Facebook page View Code
-- role="menuitem"><form id="logout_form" method="post" action="https://www.facebook.com/logout.php"
onsubmit="return
Found help elsewhere. This worked!
tell application "Safari"
tell document 1
do JavaScript "document.getElementById('logout_form').submit()"
end tell
end tell
I've been trying to figure out a way to use notifications on a background process and couldnt find anything online about it. So, I figured out one way around it and wanted to share (Not sure if this is the best way to go about doing this but here goes:)
Problem: I want to notify the user of new info when the page is running but in the background (blurred). I could use alert('new info!'); to get the taskbar icon to flash, but then you have to manually dismiss it (tried it and it's hella annoying). I really liked the notifications, but they only work if the user performs an action, so not helpful...
I hope I won't be telling something stupid, but from where I see it (and remember from school) that's basically how http works : a request is sent to the server, which issues a response eventually after executing some server-side code.
Basically you're asking for a "PUSH" functionality from server to client, and in that case you can't make use of HTTP.
Some tricks exist to work around this limitation, but basically they're all issuing requests at a certain frequency (Dave's answer does exactly that). If your site doesn't change that much, that means a lot of requests are issued for no reason (nothing has changed), consuming bandwith for nothing.
From what I know, the answer to this is called Websockets, which are supported by recent browsers only. I never had the chance to use it though so I couldn't tell much more about it. This allows full duplex communication, thus allowing server to "push" data to the client. I guess that's what SO uses for "new message" notifications (top left of the screen - you see immediately when you receive a new message)
My solution: I made a chrome extension that runs in the background and triggers the notifications. It's a little limited in scope as you need to have chrome to do it, but it does what i need it to, and for the purposes of the problem i'm working on, i can just make my user group use chrome ;D
The specifics: The extension only has two components, the manifest and a script. Currently, i setup the manifest so that it only works on my site using the match identifier... and i set the permissions to include notifications.
The JS script has a window.setinterval that looks for an element in the page with the id NOTIFIER. If it's empty, it does nothing, otherwise it creates a notification based on the content and then clears the content to prevent showing the same notification multiple times... (I tried using .onchange for that element, but couldn't get the event to trigger... I'd prefer to do this on an event rather then setInterval)
Notify.js
function onExtLoad() {
var timer = setInterval(refresh,1000);
}
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', onExtLoad());
function refresh() {
if (document.getElementById('NOTIFIER').innerHTML == "") {
//do nothing?
} else {
var notification = webkitNotifications.createNotification("",
"You got a new message",
document.getElementById('NOTIFIER').innerHTML);
notification.show();
document.getElementById('NOTIFIER').innerHTML = "";
}
}
Then, all i need to do is have the JS on the page control when it adds info the the NOTIFIER and voila! notifications!
Hope this helps someone else.
#ExpertSystem: I messed around with the MutationObserver but I can only get it to trigger once. Here's a JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/BTX8x/1/
Am I missing something? Is there a way to reset it?
EDIT: Figured it out, i needed subtree:true
My app is created with Javascript. I need it to support in-app purchase for feature unlocking.
From the documentation, it looks really simple. However, when I tries to implement it. I noticed that after returning S_OK from CurrentAppSimulator.requestProductPurchaseAsync, CurrentAppSimulator.licenseInformation.productLicenses.lookup(main.licenseName).isActive won't be changed to true.
Then I discovered this answer CurrentAppSimulator.RequestProductPurchaseAsync purchasing simulation , mentioning something about calling RequestAppPurchaseAsync once before requestProductPurchaseAsync. I did, and this way, I saw the Store popup twice. And after choosing S_OK twice, isActive is set to true. However, this status is not persistent. Running this app (by pressing F5 to debug) the second time will clear this flag and the entire purchase procedure has to be run again.
The answer also mentioned only about "correct simulation" but said nothing about whether this procedure is correct for live store app. I currently have a Windows Store developer account configured for in-app purchase, but binaries are not uploaded yet. When I try purchase with CurrentApp I got the message that the product is no longer available from Windows Store.
I'd like some viable options to make sure that my in-app purchase is correctly implemented.
Are you updating the WindowsStoreProxy.xml file? You have to do that otherwise the purchase will never be set to active. You don't need to call RequestAppPurchaseAsync... only the requestProductPurchaseAsync. Do this...
Run your app in debug mode breaking anywhere
Open QuickWatch (SHIFT +
F9) and enter
Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.current.roamingFolder.path and copy
the value (mine was C:\Users\jerfost\AppData\Local\Packages\{package
name}\LocalState
Browse to that location and open the Microsoft\Windows Store\ApiData directory
Open the WindowsStoreProxy.xml file in a text editor
Change CurrentApp/LicenseInformation/App/IsTrial to false
Change CurrentApp/ListingInformation/Product/MarketData/Name to your unique product name
That should do it. Hope that helps.