Make Private Forum

<baris>

Disable viewing forum content unless logged in · Issue #743 · NodeBB/NodeBB

Would it be difficult to implement a setting where content in the forum wasn't available unless a user was logged in?

GitHub (github.com)

aaron

Thanks @baris. I appreciate that you guys are planning to include that feature in the next release. But it's really important that I figure out a temporary solution in the next week. Can you explain how I could tweak the code to this effect:

Upon request to visit any page except /login or /register:
If user is logged in:
send them to the page normally
If user is not logged in:
redirect to /login

Thanks a lot!
Aaron

PS It would be great if posts could preserve spaces. It's hard to write pseudocode, for example, without spaces.

julian

@aaron backticks for inline code like this, four space indent for block code

like this

<baris>

@aaron Give this a shot, warning it is hacky. Add the following snippet after this line : https://github.com/designcreateplay/NodeBB/blob/master/src/webserver.js#L431

function loggedIn(req, res, next) {
	if(req.user && parseInt(req.user.uid, 10)) {
		return next();
	}

	var allowed = ['config', 'get_templates_listing', '403', 'login', 'register'];
	if(req.params && allowed.indexOf(req.params.route) !== -1) {
		return next();
	}
			
	res.status('403');
	res.redirect('/403');
}

app.all('/api/:route', loggedIn);
app.get('/', loggedIn);

I couldn't manage to redirect to the '/login' page for some reason. Maybe someone else has a better way to do it. This will redirect to 403.

aaron

Thanks a lot @baris! I'll try it out when I fix the random bug that just cropped up. It would be great if I could redirect to an arbitrary page though as I'd ultimately like to write my own welcome page and redirect there.

aaron

Hi @baris, @julian, I got everything working again and gave your solution a try. It succeeded in preventing non-logged in visitors from visiting the home page. But if someone had a direct link to a category page they could still go there. Any other ideas? I'd really like to redirect to a custom welcome page or at least the registration page if possible and it's important that every request (except those to /login or /register gets routed there if the user isn't logged in). I really appreciate your help! You've built a great piece of software.

Best,
Aaron

<baris>

Try changing app.all('/api/:route', loggedIn); to app.all('/api/:route/*?', loggedIn);

aaron

Perfect, thanks!

Do you also know how I could do one of these three things?:

Redirect to /register
Redirect to a custom page I could base off a template page which I could find...where?
Customize the /403 page

Thanks again @baris!

<baris>

File not found · NodeBB/NodeBB

Node.js based forum software built for the modern web - File not found · NodeBB/NodeBB

GitHub (github.com)

You can change that line to return ajaxify.go('/register'); then all forbidden pages will redirect to register. You can then change the register.tpl file.

aaron

Hi, thanks again @baris.

I just tried: return ajaxify.go('/register'); It didn't seem to work unfortunately.

Additionally, I now realize that the fix I said worked has a problem. While it redirects you to /403 if you type the home address into the browser, the links in the top left (home, recent, users) still work. Any idea how to solve this problem?

Thanks,
Aaron

<baris>

Try :

function loggedIn(req, res, next) {
    if(req.user && parseInt(req.user.uid, 10)) {
        return next();
    }

    var allowed = ['config', 'get_templates_listing', '403', 'login', 'register'];
    if(req.params && allowed.indexOf(req.params.route) !== -1) {
        return next();
    }

    res.status('403');
    res.redirect('/403');
}
app.all('/api/:route/*?', loggedIn);
app.all('/api/:route', loggedIn);
app.get('/', loggedIn);

and

return ajaxify('register') in the template file. That works for me.

aaron

Hmmm...now if I click on those links, all but the header disappears. For example, if I click the users icon, the address changes to /users, but the screen goes blank except for the header.

Is it possible my problems have to do with my Redis store? I'm getting this readout from the terminal where I launched the redis server:

[17580] 04 Feb 17:14:56.496 # Server started, Redis version 2.8.4
[17580] 04 Feb 17:14:56.497 * DB loaded from disk: 0.002 seconds
[17580] 04 Feb 17:14:56.497 * The server is now ready to accept connections on port 6379
[17580] 04 Feb 17:15:57.017 * 10 changes in 60 seconds. Saving...
[17580] 04 Feb 17:15:57.018 * Background saving started by pid 17592
[17592] 04 Feb 17:15:57.018 # Failed opening .rdb for saving: Permission denied
[17580] 04 Feb 17:15:57.118 # Background saving error
[17580] 04 Feb 17:16:03.052 * 10 changes in 60 seconds. Saving...
[17580] 04 Feb 17:16:03.052 * Background saving started by pid 17596
[17596] 04 Feb 17:16:03.053 # Failed opening .rdb for saving: Permission denied
[17580] 04 Feb 17:16:03.153 # Background saving error

aaron

This post is deleted!

<baris>

Make sure your browser cache is disabled when you are testing this. return ajaxify('register'); works fine for me but I got the same result you described when I tried return ajaxify('/register');.

About your redis issue looks like the user redis running under doesn't have permission to write to that location.

aaron

Thanks. That's what I figured, so I went to the directory with dump.rdb and did sudo chmod 777 dump.rdb and this is the output of ls -l:
total 16
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root wheel 5654 Jan 30 20:26 dump.rdb

Also, I definitely did register, not /register. So not sure what the problem is there.

I appreciate your taking the time to help me out with this!

<baris>

function loggedIn(req, res, next) {
    if(req.user && parseInt(req.user.uid, 10)) {
        return next();
    }

    var allowed = ['config', 'get_templates_listing', '403', 'login', 'register'];
    if(req.params && allowed.indexOf(req.params.route) !== -1) {
        return next();
    }

    res.status('403');
    res.redirect('/403');
}
app.all('/api/:route/*?', loggedIn);
app.all('/api/:route', loggedIn);

Looks like you don't need the last route. With the above code and the return ajaxify('register'); in templates.js it redirects to register for me. Let me know if it doesn't work.

aaron

It doesn't work for me. I put that block of code indented after the line:
app.namespace(nconf.get('relative_path'), function () {

I think this might be another caching issue, but it keeps forgetting who I am and I keep having to call flushall on the database and doing node app --setup again to be able to log in and test it.

aaron

This post is deleted!

<baris>

I'm not sure why you are getting that permission error. @julian might have a better idea.

aaron

Okay, I figured out the Redis thing. The permissions for dump.rdb were fine. But I had to expand the permissions for the directory they were in (/redis).

Still having the same problem with the app though. The redirect to /register isn't working and I'm getting the white screen minus the nav bar instead of getting routed to /403 or /register.