Item13969: rest and jsonrpc scripts should default the web/topic if -topic query param is not provided

MichaelDaum pointed out that we don't default a usable web/topic if rest or jsonrpc are called without the topic= query param.

Appears to be relatively easy to rectify. And SMELL in Foswiki.pm pointed out that setting web/topic to the bogus Subject/Verb from rest "did no harm". But obviously it does.

-- GeorgeClark - 23 Feb 2016

viewfile and xsendfile interprete path_info differently as well ...

And this breaks jsonrpc as EVERY request is evaluated agains %USERSWEB%.%HOMETOPIC%.

A json rpc POST request has got the format

{
   jsonrpc: "<api-version>",
   params: {
      topic: "web.topic",
      ...
   }
}

Adding a third topic parameter to the payload violates the protocol returning:

{
   "jsonrpc":"2.0",
   "error": {
      "message":"Invalid JSON-RPC request - unknown key topic",
      "code":-32600
   }
}

Sorry, I thought this was easier, but we need to rethink the approach.

Basically, some actions such as rest, jsonrpc, viewfile and xsendfile interpret the path_info differently, i.e. web and topic location might be specified:

1. on a different spot in path_info: viewfile, xsendfile
2. within a json object: jsonrpc
3. as an url parameter: optional for all scripts except rest where it should be mandatory
4. not at all: a potential script that doesn't deal with webs or topics at all.

The checkin needs a revert, unfortunately.

(Btw. this breaks AngularSkin / AngularPlugin as well which heavily relies on jsonrpc.)

-- MichaelDaum - 23 Feb 2016

Current state on this:

• rest now gets a sane default basetopic if topic= urlparam is missing.
• The parser for viewfile / xsendfile is still broken. mis-identifies attachment as topic
  • I did some testing of the Foswiki::Address parser with hinting enabled. It is also broken, but fix is pretty simple. However Foswiki::Address has been removed from master.
• jsonrpc has no sane default topic, and depends on a bug in the parser to get that way.

-- GeorgeClark - 10 Mar 2016

I have some ideas on how to address jsonrpc

The issue is that jsonrpc needs to process the data in the request early, before the baseweb / basetopic has been established, (and before the Foswiki SESSION object has initialized. If we were add to the SwitchBoard an earlyInit which runs before the Foswiki->new() is called.

    $Foswiki::cfg{SwitchBoard}{jsonrpc} = {
        package      => 'Foswiki::Contrib::JsonRpcContrib',
        function     => 'dispatch',
        initFunction => 'init',                     # Establish context & env based upon json request.
        context      => { jsonrpc => 1 },
    };

This won't be backwards compatible with Foswiki 1.x / 2.0 / 2.1, but the results is that init won't be called, and foswiki will establish the current "broken" web/topic, so it will not be any worse than it is currently.

I think it would be called in lib/Foswiki/UI.pm, around line 326, just before it calls _execute(). It would return a replacement context hash for use during initialization.

    contxt = { jsonrpc   => 1,
               webtopic   => (web.topic from json request),
           };

Foswiki.pm would then examine the "initialContext" and use it to set the web/topic.

• If initialContext contains webtopic, use it,
  • else if query param -topic=webtopic,
    • else parse query_path()

-- GeorgeClark - 14 Mar 2016

See MoveQueryPathParsingIntoFoswikiRequest. Fixing jsonrpc is more than a quick hack to Foswiki.pm. Marking this as a 2.2 but might even be a 3.0 feature.

-- Main.GeorgeClark - 20 Mar 2016 - 22:34

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