Symfony service container: binding arguments by name or type

This cool feature was introduced in Symfony 3.4 (https://symfony.com/blog/new-in-symfony-3-4-local-service-binding) but I didn't use till today.

Example: create a custom Monolog channel and inject the service in controller (Symfony 4).
I was thinking that I will have to create some sort of custom service definition in order to inject the service "monolog.logger.mychannel" into my controller, but no, it was way easier.

In services.yaml  just add:

services:
    # default configuration for services in *this* file
    _defaults:
        bind:
            # pass this service to any $mychannelLogger argument for any
            # service that's defined in this file
            $mychannelLogger: '@monolog.logger.mychannel'

Now is super easy to inject the service in controllers by adding "$mychannelLogger" in the list of function parameters:

/**
     * @Route("/{id}", name="project_update", methods={"POST"})
     */
    public function delete(Request $request, LoggerInterface $mychannelLogger): Response
    {
    

Read more about it in Symfony docs: https://symfony.com/doc/current/service_container.html#services-binding

Custom user provider using multiple database connections with Doctrine and Symfony 4

Situation :

I am using Symfony 4.3 and autowiring.

I have 2 Doctrine database connections, a default and "users" connection:

doctrine:
    dbal:
        default_connection: default
        connections:

           .....
    orm:
        auto_generate_proxy_classes: true
        default_entity_manager: default
        entity_managers:
            default:
                connection: default
                mappings:
                    Main:
                        is_bundle: false
                        type: annotation
                        dir: '%kernel.project_dir%/src/Entity/Main'
                        prefix: 'App\Entity\Main'
                        alias: Main
            users:
                connection: users
                mappings:
                    Users:
                        is_bundle: false
                        type: annotation
                        dir: '%kernel.project_dir%/src/Entity/UsersManagement'
                        prefix: 'App\Entity\UsersManagement'
                        alias: Users

So my User entity was managed by the secondary connection "users". Checking from command line would show me that everything is mapped correctly:

php bin/console doctrine:mapping:info --em=users

 Found 7 mapped entities:

 [OK]   App\Entity\UsersManagement\User

Also when loading users I am using a customer query by making UserRepository implement the UserLoaderInterface. (https://symfony.com/doc/current/security/user_provider.html).

security:
    # https://symfony.com/doc/current/security.html#where-do-users-come-from-user-providers
    providers:
        app_user_provider:
            entity:
                class: App\Entity\UsersManagement\User

But when I try to login, ugly surprise this error pops:
 "The class 'App\Entity\UsersManagement\User' was not found in the chain configured namespaces App\Entity\Main" 

 After googling a little bit I get to this life saving comment from stof: https://github.com/symfony/symfony/pull/8187#issuecomment-18910167

Here is how you configure it:

security:
    providers:
        my_provider:
            entity:
                class: Acme\DemoBundle\Entity\User
                manager_name: users  #non default entity manager

So there is a 'secret' parameter "manager_name" that you need to add to security.yml and is not enough that the entity is correctly mapped by Doctrine.

If somebody ever finds this useful please add a comment :D

Automated API testing using Codeception

I was looking for a tool for testing an API, and I remembered about my old friend Codeception, which I used for some functional testing a while ago. I need now to test an API which is receiving requests and gives responses using JSON format.

Install Codeception via Composer

$ composer require "codeception/codeception" 

Create an alias so you do not have to write the entire path every time you execute a command:

$ alias codecept='./vendor/bin/codecept'

Create an API test suite:

$ codecept generate:suite api

Edit the configuration file  tests/api.suite.yml:

class_name: ApiTester
modules:
    enabled:
        - \Helper\Api
        - REST:
            url: "http://yourwebste.com/"
            depends: PhpBrowser
            part: Json

I will be using "Cest" format:  "Cest combines scenario-driven test approach with OOP design. In case you want to group a few testing scenarios into one you should consider using Cest format."

$ codecept generate:cest api UsersTestCest

This command is creating a PHP file under tests/api/.  
Before starting to write my first tests I need to find a way to pass a username and password to all tests, as it is needed for connecting to the API.
I can add any parameters to the api.suite.yml and access them inside my test classes:
api.suite.yml

class_name: ApiTester
modules:
    enabled:
        - \Helper\Api
        - REST:
            url: "http://yourwebsite.com"
            depends: PhpBrowser
            part: Json
params:
    username: "username"
    password: "password"

 And inside tests/api/UsersTestCest.php

class UsersTestCest
{
    private $username;
    private $password;

    public function _before(ApiTester $I)
}
    {
        $config = \Codeception\Configuration::config();
        $apiSettings = \Codeception\Configuration::suiteSettings('api', $config);
        $this->username = $apiSettings['params']['username'];
        $this->password = $apiSettings['params']['password'];
    }
}

The function "_before()" will be executed as it names says, before actual test functions, and it will  initialize the variables with values from api.suite.yml file.

Let's write the first test function:

public function createUser(ApiTester $I)
    {
        $action = "create_user";
        $I->haveHttpHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json');

        $array=[
            "action"=> $action,
            "username"=> $this->username,
            "key"=> $this->password,
            "user_username"=> "new_username",
            "user_email"=> "email@company.com",
            "user_password"=> "password"
            ]
        ];
        $string = json_encode($array);
        $I->sendPOST('api.php',$string);
        $I->seeResponseCodeIs(\Codeception\Util\HttpCode::OK); // 200
        $I->seeResponseIsJson();
        $I->seeResponseMatchesJsonType([
            'operation' => 'string',
            'status' => 'string',
        ]);
    }

The link where the request is sent with the function sendPost() is the concatenation between the URL parameter from api.suite.yml and the first parameter in sentPost() function.
You can check if the response has HTTP status 200, if it is in JSON format and if the JSON has the expected structure.
Even more you can create your own assertions. These custom functions needs to be added to the file "tests/_support/ApiTester.php".
I will add a function to verify if the "status" field from the response is equal to '1'

<?php
namespace Helper;
class will be available in $I
use Codeception\TestInterface;

class Api extends \Codeception\Module
{
    public function checkOperationStatusSuccess()
    {
        $response = $this->getModule('REST')->response;
        $array = json_decode($response, true);
        $this->assertEquals('1',$array['status'],"Operation status should be '1' for success.");
    }
}

Run all tests with this command:

codecept run api -v

Or only tests from certain class:

$ codecept run tests/api/UsersTestCest.php -v

  
The tests are executed in the alphabetic order of the classes, but you can use the annotation "@depends" to indicated that your test function depends on other one(s). 
Enjoy!

Web SSO - part 2 - integration with LDAP

In my previous article I presented how to create a web SSO system using SimpleSAMLphp and Symfony. The users where declared directly in simpleSAMLphp using "exampleauth:UserPass".

In many companies a LDAP server is the source from where information about user authentication is taken. I will install  OpenLDAP and configure my applications to use it.

1. Install OpenLDAP and phpLDAPadmin

For installing OpenLDAP and phpLDAPadmin I followed this tutorials from DigitalOcean:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-configure-openldap-and-phpldapadmin-on-an-ubuntu-14-04-server

You will need to edit also the ldap.conf file, see this thread on StackOverflow

Also you may get an error when trying to login with phpLDAPadmin  "Notice: Undefined variable: _SESSION in ..". 
For me this solution from StackOverflow solved the problem:

"Just add the user wich is running Apache2 (or php5-fpm!) to the system group "www-data" (debian) and restart services apache AND if used php5-fpm both.
Get the User apache is running as:

~# sed -rn 's/^User (.+)/\1/p' /etc/apache2/apache2.conf"

Using phpLDAPadmin I've created two groups "admin" and "regular_users" and also I've created some users allocated to these two groups.

2. Modify SimpleLDAPphp to use OpenLDAP

The documentation for using LDAP authentication is found here: https://simplesamlphp.org/docs/stable/ldap:ldap

My settings are:


Select LDAP authentication to be used from   /metadata/saml20-idp-hosted.php

 /* 
         *Authentication source to use. Must be one that is configured in
* 'config/authsources.php'.
*/
'auth' => 'example-ldap',

3. Modify Symfony app

In the current Symfony application I am expecting an attribute roles containing an array of roles. From LDAP I will receive different attributes, one of them is gidNumber, which is a number identifying a group. My current groups: admin and regular_users have gidNumber 500 and 501.
I will be using these gidNumbers to correctly create roles in the Symfony application.

The changes to be made are done in the UserCreator class:

Of course you need to change these mappings to fit your situation.

4. Test

First make sure to delete any sessions and cookies. After that try to access the secure route from consumer1.local, login with any user from LDAP and you should be redirected to secure area. Check in database if the user and user roles were created correctly.

Web SSO with Symfony and SimpleSAMLphp

1. Single sign on (SSO)

Sooner or later web development teams face one problem: you have developed an application at domain X and now you want your new application at domain Y to use the same login information as the other domain. In fact, you want more: you want users who are already logged-in at domain X to be already logged-in at domain Y. This is what SSO is all about. (source: https://auth0.com/blog/what-is-and-how-does-single-sign-on-work )

2. Concepts:

Identity Provider (IdP)  - is responsible for (a) providing identifiers for users looking to interact with a system, (b) asserting to such a system that such an identifier presented by a user is known to the provider, and (c) possibly providing other information about the user that is known to the provider.

ServiceProvider (SP) - it can be any application. In order to access the secure areas of the application the user need to be authenticated and authorized by a IdP

SAML  - Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced sam-el) is an XML-based, open-standard data format for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. SAML is a product of the OASIS Security Services Technical Committee.

3. The flow

- the USER  requests a secure area from ServiceProvider

- if the user is not authenticated it is redirected to IdP with some information about SP

- the USER fills his credentials on IdP and after successful authentication is redirected back to SP

- based on the answer from IdP the SP creates the a new user or identify an existing one in his own database and creates a session.

4. Tools

SimpleSAMLphp - it can be used both as IdP and SP, I will be using it only as IdP

lightsaml/SP-Bundle - Symfony Bundle implementing the ServiceProvider

5. Implementation

5.1. Create and configure IdP

Install simpleSAMLphp following the documentation. I've created a virtualhost idp.local and the simpleSAMLphp is available at : http://idp.local/simplesamlphp

Next step is to configure simleSAMLphp as IdentityProvider following the quick guide using the exampleauth:UserPass authentication method.

I'll modify the defined users in config/authsources.php, by replacing the attribute "eduPersonAffilication" with 'roles':

      'student:studentpass' => array(

             'uid' => array('student'),

             'roles' => array('ROLE_USER', 'ROLE_SEF'),

         ),

To make it clear, you have just created a user "student" with password "studentpass". 

Skip the step 6 from the quick guide.

At the step 7 you need to enter the information about ServiceProviders. At this moment they do not exist, but they will, so you can fill the following 2 service providers:

$metadata['http://consumer1.local/saml'] = array(

    'AssertionConsumerService' => 'http://consumer1.local/app_dev.php/saml/login_check',

    'SingleLogoutService'      => 'https://consumer1.local/app_dev.php/logout',

    'simplesaml.nameidattribute' => 'uid',

);

$metadata['http://consumer2.local/saml'] = array(

    'AssertionConsumerService' => 'http://consumer2.local/app_dev.php/saml/login_check',

    'SingleLogoutService'      => 'https://consumer2.local/app_dev.php/logout',

    'simplesaml.nameidattribute' => 'uid',

);

I called them consumers because they consume the authentication service provided by IdP.

Skip steps from 8 to 11.

5.2 Create and configure SPs

Install Symfony and create a virtual host consumer1.local

We will be following the lightsaml/SP-Bundle documentation found here.

At step 7 configure your own entity_id and use the previously created IdP.

 -  First go to your IdP, it should be idp.local/simplesamlphp. Click on the Federation tab, you should see somewhere  SAML 2.0 IdP Metadata. Click on [Show metadata], copy the XML and createa file in your Symfony app: /src/AppBundle/Idp/idp.local.xml and paste the XML.

-  edit app/config.yml

At step 9 (and 11), please see below my security.yml:

Where /secure is a  just route I created for testing purpose. 

Step 10. Basically if the user logged in IdP does not exist in the database of the SP, in this case consumer1.local, it needs to be created.  For this reason a UserCreator class is made. In the documentation this class is able to identify the user id (uid) using a "username mapper" service. I will enhance that by adding an "attributes" mapper which will create an array with the other attributes passed from IdentityProvider. I want to pass a list of roles from IdP to SP.  If you remember I've added a list of 'roles' to my 'student' user. Below you can find a gist with the code for the AttributeMapper

Declare the attribute mapper service in app/services.yml:

attribute_mapper:

   class: AppBundle\Security\User\AttributeMapper

Modify the UserCreator class:

Declare the User Creator service injecting in it our Attribute Mapper service:

    user_creator:
        class: AppBundle\Security\User\UserCreator
        arguments:
            - "@=service('doctrine').getManager()"
            - "@lightsaml_sp.username_mapper.simple"
            - "@inno.attribute_mapper"
Also inject the attribute mapper service into the security.authentication.provider.lightsaml_sp service:

    security.authentication.provider.lightsaml_sp:
        class: LightSaml\SpBundle\Security\Authentication\Provider\LightsSamlSpAuthenticationProvider
        arguments:
            - ~ # provider key
            - ~ # user provider
            - ~ # force
            - "@security.user_checker"
            - "@lightsaml_sp.username_mapper.simple" # username mapper
            - ~ # user creator
            - "@inno.attribute_mapper" # attribute mapper
            - ~ # token factory
        abstract: true





5.3 Put your application at work


In browser try to access consumer1.local/app_dev.php/secure, because you are not   authenticated

 you should be redirected to http://consumer1.local/app_dev.php/saml/discoveryClick on your IdP,

 you will be redirected to the IdP site where you will fill your user and password (student and 

studentpass. After that you are redirected to the secure page on cosumer1.local.You can check your

 database to see the newly created user. Now copy your Symfony installation and make another 

virtual host consumer2.local. Open the browser and try to access:  consumer2.local/app_dev.php/securePick

 your IdP from discovery page, because you are already logged on IdP you will not be asked for 

password again, instead you are redirected to the secure page. Victory!In the next blog post I will

 investigate integrating LDAP with SimpleSAMLphp.

Using Silex and Symfony together in same application

I am testing the idea of having an application using both Silex and Symfony.

Why ?

Maybe because I want for some parts of the application to be really fast, and for the most of the application to enjoy the productivity of using a full stack framework and have access to all the third party bundles.

Of course having 2 application may introduce other kind of problems.

How my application should work:

- receive request
- fast Silex kernel handles the request.
     - if the URL request is not matching any of the routes from Silex, it will return a response with status 404
    -  if the URL is matching a route, execute controller and get response
- check what is the response from Silex
    - if the response has status 404 pass it to the Symfony kernel
   -  otherwise return response

Using the 2 frameworks together is possible because they both use the same abstraction for HTTP Request and Response and the HttpKernel.
There is a project called StackPHP that promotes interoperability between applications based on the HttpKernelInterface.

Implementation:


Create a probject folder under /var/www/public called double: /var/www/public/double
I will be using Symfony Standard Edition and Silex Skeleton project by Fabien Potencier: https://packagist.org/packages/fabpot/silex-skeleton

Install using Composer in two different subfolders:

   composer create-project fabpot/silex-skeleton  silex  ~2.0@dev
   composer create-project symfony/framework-standard-edition symf

Create a virtual host that will point to /var/www/public/double/symf/web
You may want to first save Symfony app.php and app_dev.php before editing them:
app_dev.php :

<?php

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Symfony\Component\Debug\Debug;
use Silex\Application;



/**
 * @var Composer\Autoload\ClassLoader $loader
 */
$loader = require __DIR__.'/../app/autoload.php';
require_once __DIR__.'/../../silex/vendor/autoload.php';

Debug::enable();

//create request object
$request = Request::createFromGlobals();

//initialize Silex app
$app = require __DIR__.'/../../silex/src/app.php';
require __DIR__.'/../../silex/config/dev.php';
require __DIR__.'/../../silex/src/controllers.php';

//handle request with Silex app
$response = $app->handle($request);

if ($response->getStatusCode() === 404) {

    //initialize Symfony app and handle request
    $kernel = new AppKernel('dev', true);
    $kernel->loadClassCache();
    $response = $kernel->handle($request);
    $response->send();
    $kernel->terminate($request, $response);

} else {
    $response->send();
    $app->terminate($request, $response);
}

Into app.php I've added microtime() function to get the loading time in production as I do not have access to the Web Profiler.

<?php

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response;
use Silex\Application;

$time_start = microtime(true);
/**
 * @var Composer\Autoload\ClassLoader $loader
 */
$loader = require_once __DIR__.'/../app/autoload.php';
require_once __DIR__.'/../../silex/vendor/autoload.php';


//create request object
$request = Request::createFromGlobals();

//initialize Silex app
$app = require __DIR__.'/../../silex/src/app.php';
require __DIR__.'/../../silex/config/prod.php';
require __DIR__.'/../../silex/src/controllers.php';

$response = $app->handle($request);

if ($response->getStatusCode() === 404) {


    $kernel = new AppKernel('prod', false);
    $kernel->loadClassCache();
    $response = $kernel->handle($request);
    $response->send();
    $kernel->terminate($request, $response);

    $time_end = microtime(true);
    $time = $time_end - $time_start;

    echo "Execution time: $time seconds\n";

} else {
    $response->send();
    $app->terminate($request, $response);

    $time_end = microtime(true);
    $time = $time_end - $time_start;

    echo "Execution time: $time seconds\n";
}

I did some simple tests using the production env (app.php) and generally Silex is 3 times faster than Symfony, which is no surprise as it is lighter.
In Silex I used Doctrine DBAL (not ORM), the provider it is included in the Silex Skeleton project, just needs to be configured in src/app.php:

$app->register(new DoctrineServiceProvider(), array(
    'dbs.options' => array (
        'localhost' => array(
            'driver'    => 'pdo_mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'dbname'    => 'symfony',
            'user'      => 'root',
            'password'  => 'root',
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
        )
    ),
));

Multilingual website with Symfony

If you want to create a multilingual website, Symfony together with the community bundles have the tools for a fast set up.

When creating a multilingual website we need to take in account translating:

1. Specific routes per language
2. Menus, labels and forms
3. The content of the website
4. Extra: translate FOSUserBundle

1. Routes 

It may be tempting to use the same URL to display a resource in different languages based on the user's locale. For example, http://www.example.com/contact could show content in English for one user and French for another user. Unfortunately, this violates a fundamental rule of the Web: that a particular URL returns the same resource regardless of the user. To further muddy the problem, which version of the content would be indexed by search engines?

A better policy is to include the locale in the URL. This is fully-supported by the routing system using the special _locale parameter, see documentation:

http://symfony.com/doc/current/translation/locale.html#translation-locale-url

The term locale refers roughly to the user's language and country. It can be any string that your application uses to manage translations and other format differences (e.g. currency format). The ISO 639-1 language code, an underscore (_), then the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code (e.g. fr_FR for French/France) is recommended.

In config.yml add the following:

parameters:    locale: en_GB
    app.locales: en_GB|es_ES|fr_FR

framework:
    translator:  { fallbacks: ["%locale%"] }

By declaring the list of accepted as parameter you can easily use it in all routes declarations:

/** 

 * @Route("/{_locale}/product",  

 *     name="product",  

 *     requirements={ "_locale" = "%app.locales%" }) 

 */

public function productAction(Request $request)

By doing this, a route will look like this : www.mysite.com/en_GB/product

 2. Translations - labels, menus etc.

Translation of text is done through the translator service (Translator). To translate a block of text (called a message), use the trans() method, or in Twig using trans and transchoice tags.

The recommended way is to have message placeholders which will be translated using a translation file (one per each language).  An example would be a menu button that in english should show "About". We can create a placeholder named:  "menu.about" which will be translated in Twig:

     {{ 'menu.about'|trans }}

The translation files can have different formats (like YAML of XLIFF) and they live usually in app/Resources/translations, or under Resources/translations in your bundle.

I will be using YAML,  so I will create the files "messages.en_GB.yml" , "messages.es_ES.yml" etc.

Inside I add the placeholder and the translation:

button.product.view_detail : View detail

3. Content translation

One solution would be to create yourself the entities and handle the process. Imagine having a Product entity containing fields that do not need translation, like Id, Price and another entity ProductTranslation containing translatable fields like Name and Description. These two will be in a relation (example: OneToMany).

Another way is to use some community bundles that handle these process for us. I will be using KnpLabs/DoctrineBehaviors  and A2Lix TranslationBundle. 

Install DoctrineBehaviors and add translatable: true to config.yml  :

knp_doctrine_behaviors:    ...
    translatable:   true

Create your entities following the tutorial from documentation. Be careful that there are two different traits to be used in Entity and EntityTranslation classes.Do not add id field to the EntityTranslation class as it will be taken care by the traits. Update database structure:  php bin/console doctrine:schema:update  --force
I am using DoctrineFixturesBundle to add some data. For adding an apple(fruit) product the code is:

$product = new Product();

$product->translate('en')->setName('Apple ');

$product->translate('es')->setName('Manzana ');

$product->translate('en')->setDescription('Sweet apple');

$product->translate('es')->setDescription('Manzana dulce ');

$product->setImage('apple.jpeg');

$product->setCurrency($currency);

$product->setPrice(1.00);

$product->setActive('1');
$manager->persist($product);

$product->mergeNewTranslations();

In the database, I have a product_translation table where the information is saved. 
In controller I am retrieving the product object just as usual:

    $product = $em->getRepository('AppBundle:Product')->find($id);

In order to display the translatable fields in the current language in Twig I use:

    {{ product.translate(app.request.locale).name }}

For handling translation from the website interface you can use A2Lix TranslationBundle which will create a form with tabs for each translation (I've installed the version 3.x)

I've generated a ProductType class and added another line in code after adding my non translatable fields:  

use A2lix\TranslationFormBundle\Form\Type\TranslationsType;

...

$builder    ->add('active')
    ->add('price')
    ));

$builder->add('translations', TranslationsType::class);

4. Extra: translate FOSUserBundle

FOSUserBundle is one of the most popular Symfony bundles. You can easily activate translation by following the instructions from the link below:

https://codereviewvideos.com/course/getting-started-with-fosuserbundle/video/translations-and-internationalisation-in-fosuserbundle