Restricting auth required actions for guest users on HapRamp Alpha Web App

Repository

https://github.com/hapramp/alpha-web

Bug Description

The HapRamp alpha web app allows users to browse the app as a guest (i.e. without signing in). This is a good thing for people who just come in to read some content and walk away. But it may be possible that these guest users try to rate/comment on the app.

Previously, there was no check for auth status and hence the actions were not restricted. In this post, I will be describing the way in which I handled this case without having to change a significant part of the code.

Solution

To achieve this, I created an intermediate wrapper for the actions which would check the login status of current user and dispatch accordingly. It worked using the following logic -

• Is the user logged in while performing the action?
  • Yes
    Let him perform the action
  • No
    Toast a UI notification asking them to log in.

The function looks something like this -

import notify from './notification';  // For creating UI notifications
import getStore from './storeUtils';  // For getting store state

const notAuthorizedError = () => dispatch => {
    notify.danger('Please log in first!');
    return Promise.reject();
};

export const authRequired = target => getStore().getState().login.isLoggedIn ? target : notAuthorizedError;

All the actions that required auth from user were then wrapped with this function to achieve the desired results. Here is an example -

export const ratePost = authRequired((author, permlink, vote) => dispatch => {
  ...  // Implementation of actual action
});

Commits

• https://github.com/hapramp/alpha-web/commit/55c43f973ed6b48126d298fcd5470aef880ea57d
• https://github.com/hapramp/alpha-web/commit/83c08b2f09954e7f665305b8dac4297df479f579
• https://github.com/hapramp/alpha-web/commit/72e2ee624fa55e4e0d613c2d0c9b3aed8b4b7073

PS: We just went open source and are looking for helping hands. If you are interested, please visit https://github.com/hapramp/alpha-web.

Github Account

https://github.com/singhpratyush