posty

README

Posty - Project 1

Project

Group: Group01

Projectname: Posty

Groupmembers: Benedikt Lang (mail at blang.io)

Hosting

Hosted on AWS Elastic Bean Stalk: https://posty.elasticbeanstalk.com/

Root CA: ./rootCA.pem

Software, Tools, Libs

Golang

The original suggestion was to use java but Prof. Reiser agreed on an approach in Go. Golang was developed by google engineers to build large long-running systems and is especially suited for webservices.

The benefits:

• Most code is more concise than in java
• Lowlevel oauth2/oidc implementation more easy to implement (see later)
• Single binary deployment, Fast compilation, Dependency management
• Clear Codestyle and Docs

WGO (Go Workspaces)

wgo is a small wrapper around the go toolchain to enable a standalone workspace with fixed dependencies. Therefore posty is build using wgo build posty instead of go build posty.

Docker

The EBS Deployment uses docker, because it fits the picture and give greater flexibility. The project is build to one static binary (posty backend) and the frontend directory (html, javascript,..).

Since EBS supports native golang deployments, this would be possible too but it's more complicated to build the binary using the fixed dependencies bundled by wgo.

For convenience everthing can be build using docker, no need to install a node.js or golang environment (see later).

AngularJS, Bootstrap (Frontend)

A proper REST API needs a suitable consumer. AngularJS is a good choice to build an interactive frontend consuming a REST API. The whole application logic is in frontend/app/static/scripts/controllers/main.js. The view in views/.

Bootstrap is used to please the eye at least a little bit.

Important libraries (Backend)

• xhandler: HTTP Handler wrapper using net/context. Better flexibility between different routers, uses context to transport sessions etc.
• goji: Minimalistic Webframework. Gojis http router was used for speed and support for url patterns like /api/post/:id.
• gorilla/sessions/gorilla/securecookie: Secure Cookies (transporting the user_id) use HMAC and Encryption to be tamper-proof. It enables to scale the application horizontally since no session store is needed.
• dgrijalva/jwt: JWT parses and verifies id tokens as JSON Webtokens using available signing methods like HMAC or RSA.

Design

###Workflow

• User visits / (gets redirected to /login)
• User chooses identify provider (Google or Paypal) and gets redirected to '/logingoogleor/loginpaypal`)
• Backend generates random state and nonce used for oidc. Redirects to provider with oidc clientid, state, scope...
• User gets redirected to provider
• User logs in on provider
• User gets redirected to callback endpoint: /gcallback (google) or /pcallback (paypal)
• Backend handles session creation, user is created if not already in database.
• User is redirected to board page /
• Posts are listed on page: Frontend calls GET /api/posts (with session cookie)
• Backend authenticates user based on session cookie (on every /api/ call and returns result set from database.
• User posts something: Frontend handles REST Call: POST /api/posts {"data":{"message":"my posting"}}
• Backend responds with 201 Created and responds with created post.
• User deletes post: Frontend handles REST Call: DELETE /api/posts/423e7b0a-efcd-4eb4-9704-791f681507fa
• If User is not authorized, API responded with Status 401, Error message is shown
• Backend responds with 204 No content on success.
• User logs out: /logout. Session is invalidated by backend.
• User gets redirected to /login

Model (posty/model, posty/model/awsdynamo)

The model encapsulates the data store logic of the application. It's divided in two packages user and post, since those are the stored entities.

While the package model implements the interfaces and basic types, the package awsdynamo is the concrete implementation backed by AWS DynamoDB including integration tests.

OIDC (posty/oidc)

Google and Paypal were chosen as Identity Providers because both implement the OpenID Connect protocol (at least partly).

Because of problems with the Paypal API a general oidc library like coreos/go-oidc were not chosen in the final implementation: Paypals ID Token use a HMAC signature which can not be verified, because it's not signed with the users secret key. Paypal also does not support a proper "sub" Claim to identify the user without accessing to an userinfo endpoint.

The package oidc implements a suitable oidc strategy for Google and Paypal and was completely build by hand. jwt-go provides the necessary functionality to parse and verify the id_token.

Session stored secrets are used to verify the state of the oidc session and after the id token is verified, also the nounce and the audience is checked for any tampering attempt. To verify Googles id token googles certificates are loaded from the cert endpoint.

The paypal oidc is configured to work on the paypal sandbox for demostration purpose, this ensures better options for the demo (multiple accounts). Replacing the 3 oidc urls inside oidc/paypal.go from sandbox.paypal.com to api.paypal.com will work in production. No further changes are needed.

Controllers

The controller package consists of two important types PostController and AuthController. AuthController handles the process of logging in using OIDC and the registration of new users.

The PostController provides a REST API to create, delete and list posts.

Both controllers are connected with the model using flexible interfaces.

Middleware

Middleware is called before the actual http handler and provides necessary context. The auth middleware has two variants:

The UnauthenticatedFilter only allows logged-out users to reach the http handler, logged-in users are redirected. AuthenticatedFilter provides the exact opposite.

Both filters provide a flexible handling of the routes.

The session middleware handles the cookie managment. All session data is stored in cookies encrypted and hashed using the securecookie library. Using this approach, it's possible to scale horizontally without the need for a seperate session database.

Main

The main package builds the foundation for the project. It's build as a 12 Factor Application, which means it's completely configured using commandline flags and/or environment variables. This has a big advantage in deployment, since a seperate configuration can be supplied for development and production using the environment, like in Amazon Elastic Beanstalk.

Documentation

The code docs can be viewed using godoc in your webbrowser and is highly recommended (see below).

Frontend

The frontend is a very simple angularjs application.

It provides REST API calls and renders the result.

For user convenience it is possible to filter all posts using the filter field. The posts are filtered (all fields) as the user types.

Build, Test and Run

Build using Docker (recommended)

Requirements:

• Docker 1.7+

View Godocs

# Pull docker container
docker pull blang/posty-build-backend
# Exec godocs (127.0.0.1:6060)
./build/backend/godocs.sh

See http://127.0.0.1:6060/pkg/posty/ for GoDocs.

Build backend

# Pull docker container
docker pull blang/posty-build-backend
# OR build container locally
./build/backend/buildcontainer.sh

# Build ./posty using container
./build/backend/build.sh

Output: ./posty binary

Build frontend

# Pull docker container
docker pull blang/posty-build-frontend
# OR build container locally
./build/frontend/buildcontainer.sh

# Build ./frontend/dist directory using container
./build/frontend/build.sh

Output: ./frontend/dist

Build staging

After you built the backend and the frontend, the following structure should be present:

• ./posty (go binary)
• ./frontend/dist (frontend files)

Now you can build a production ready container:

./build/staging/buildcontainer.sh

This will create the container: blang/posty-staging

Build Elastic Beanstalk zip

You can create a valid zip file for Elastic bean stalk:

./build/staging/create_ebs_zip.sh

This will create posty-staging.zip.

Build manually

Frontend and backend can also be build without using docker:

View Godocs

Requirements:

• Go 1.4+

# Get wgo
go get github.com/skelterjohn/wgo

# Restore dependencies
wgo restore

GOPATH=$(wgo env GOPATH) godoc -http ':6060'

See http://127.0.0.1:6060/pkg/posty/ for GoDocs.

Build backend

Requirements:

• Go 1.4+

Build using wgo (for vendoring):

# Get wgo
go get github.com/skelterjohn/wgo

# Restore dependencies
wgo restore

# Build
wgo build posty

Build frontend

Requirements:

• Nodejs

cd frontend

npm install -g grunt-cli bower

# Install local dependencies
npm install

# Bower install
bower install

# Build
grunt build

Output: ./dist

Run locally

Requirements:

• dynamodb local running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/
• local golang dev environment
• built ./posty

Setup a development environment for the 12-factor app:

export POSTY_OIDC_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=[YOUR DATA HERE]
export POSTY_OIDC_GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=[YOUR DATA HERE]
export POSTY_OIDC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_ID=[YOUR DATA HERE]
export POSTY_OIDC_PAYPAL_CLIENT_SECRET=[YOUR DATA HERE]
export POSTY_DYNAMODB_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:8000/
# Setup aws credentials or use ~/.aws credentials
export AWS_REGION=us-west-2
export AWS_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:8000/
export AWS_PROFILE=dev
export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=dev
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=dev

Run the integration tests. This will create the dynamodb tables user and post needed.

wgo test posty/model/awsdynamo/integrationtest -test.v -integration

Run Posty:

./posty -frontend-path "./frontend/dist"

All configuration is done by commandline flags or environment variables beginning with POSTY_. Have a look at ./posty --help for more information.