Symfony2: SecurityBundle

Outline of how it’s involved in Symfony2:

1. AppKernel -> handle  is called ( look app.php )
2. FrameworkBundle :: HttpKernel’s -> handle is called
3. Component :: HttpKernel’s handle is called. Which then calls handleRaw
4. The HttpKernel dispatches an kernel.request event.
5. The event is captured by a Firewall previously set as a listener by the SecurityBundle’s security.xml
6. The onKernelRequest method of this Firewall is called.
7. The firewall loops trough all the AuthenticationListeners which where set here ( lines 213 to 225 ) as part of the Firewall and call it’s handle method.
8. If a security violation is detected ( the authentication listeners will throw this exceptions ), a kernel.exception is detected by an ExceptionListener previosuly set in security_listeners.xml and registered in the Firewall at the time of the Request.

So that’s an overview of how the SecurityBundle intercepts Requests and based on the reaction of the AuthenticationListeners will do nothing or throw an exception informing about the security violation.

Step 4 is where the magic happens, as you can see, the Request is intercepted before reaching the actual controller. As described here:

(The numbers in the image are NOT related with the numbers in this article, they are part of the image form the Symfony book)

Symfony2: Custom Authentication Provider

Source: How to create a custom Authentication Provider

Regarding Security, in Symfony you have 2 providers. One is an Authentication provider and the other is an UserProvider.

• An authentication provider is used to extract information from a request to be used  to identify the user.
• An user provider is used to check if the user found by the authentication provider exists on our pool of users.

So basically, the authentication provider finds information about an user on the Request and creates a TOKEN with that information. This token contains the credentials of the users. With that token, the security bundle tries to find a user using the available user Provider and tries to see if it finds one that has/match the currently found user Token. If nothing is found, an error is thrown telling so.

Easy to understand example ( AP = Authentication provider. UP = User Provider ):

AP:  -Hey UP, i think i found an user on the request, take a look at this token-

UP:  -let me see… Mmhh.. yeah, i found one, your token is valid!-

AP: -Ok, thanks. Hey Symfony Security layer, this token is valid!-

Overview:

Symfony2 & CSS url References.

I was having problems when designing my website, i was linking to images and then on the development enviroment i wasn’t able to see them.

For example, when working on localhost/website/web/app_dev.php and you have something like this:

.someDiv {
   background: url(images/logo.png) no-repeat;
}

The browser would search for localhost/website/web/app_dev.php/images/logo.png which would throw a 404.

So after trying to find out the “correct” way of solving this, i just said: -fuck it, just do it- and i edited the file app.php in the web directory and added this at the very begining of the file (i would remove when going to production):

 

<?php

#-----------------------------
include "app_dev.php";
exit;
#-----------------------------

require_once __DIR__.'/../app/bootstrap.php.cache';
require_once __DIR__.'/../app/AppKernel.php';

use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Request;

$kernel = new AppKernel('prod', false);
$kernel->handle(Request::createFromGlobals())->send();

it get the job done and doesn’t make you lose time trying to figure out anything weird.
If someone knows the correct way of solving this, please let me know.

CSS Nested Divs Debug Style

The following styles will make nested divs, up to 6 levels with a diferent shade of black. To easily visualize the depth. This is for testing while designing.

div {
  border: 1px solid #000;
  margin: 2px;
  padding: 2px; }
  div > div {
    border-color: #333; }
    div > div > div {
      border-color: #666; }
      div > div > div > div {
        border-color: #999; }
        div > div > div > div > div {
          border-color: #CCC; }
          div > div > div > div > div > div {
            border-color: #e1e1e1; }
            div > div > div > div > div > div > div {
              border-color: #eaeaea; }