Auto Login from Iphone Home Screen Shortcut using LocalStorage and Rack
If you ever worked on Mobile Application and if you have been ever asked to design a web auto login for iOS Home Screen Desktop every
time a user click the Home Screen Shortcut then you might want settle down and read this post bcoz this can help you
The first that I came across when implementing the home screen shortcut how to manage the cookie and how to store in browser
(even when browser is closed)
Thank full to HTML5 as it provide a localStorage I quickly got the insight how where to store the cookie
For any one how aren't aware of HTML5 localStorage. HTML5 localStorage provide API for storing data locally on browser which can be
access any time by your application in near future.
Now with clear insight of where to store the cookie the next task is how to access it and wrap it in request.
That when Rack Hit me
The idea is to mount a rack application on top rails middleware and then play around with Rails request/response cycle . Let me Hook
up the code to then explain you everything bit by bit
[ruby]
CODE = %{
}
COOKIE = %{
}
def initialize(app)
@app = app
end
def call(env)
if iphone_web_app?(env)
if new_session?(env)
[200,{'Content-Length' => code(true).length.to_s, 'Content-Type' => 'text/html'}, code(true)]
else
status, headers, body = @app.call(env)
request = Rack::Request.new(env)
response = Rack::Response.new([], status, headers)
cookie = String.new
request.cookies.each_pair do |key,value|
cookie += "#{key}=#{value};"
end
body.each do |part|
part.gsub!(/<\/head>/, "#{set_cookie(cookie)}")
response.write(part)
end
response.finish
end
else
@app.call(env)
end
end
protected
def code(resend=false)
regex = "_session_id"
if Rails.configuration.session_store.name == "ActionDispatch::Session::CookieStore"
regex = Rails.configuration.session_options[:key]
end
CODE.gsub('{{RESEND}}', resend.to_s).gsub('{{REGEX}}',regex.to_s)
end
def set_cookie(cookie)
COOKIE.gsub('{{COOKIE}}',cookie.to_s)
end
def new_session?(env)
request = Rack::Request.new(env)
if request.cookies['_cookieset_'].nil?
true
else
false
end
end
def iphone_web_app?(env)
if env['HTTP_USER_AGENT']
env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] =~ /WebKit.*Mobile/ && !(env['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] =~ /Safari/)
end
end
end
[/ruby]
Now the idea is to trap the request def new_session? which has no cookie associated with it return the code javascript in response body and extract the cookie from localStorage localStorage.getItem('__cookie__');
associate it with document using document.cookie syntax and re-request the page using window.location.reload()
Voila there you have it next time you open your Home screen shortcut you would not be thrown to login screen citing no active session available.
Hooking all of this in one gem called rack_iphone
Note : There are other way you can achieve the same using parameterized URL (where a URL will be identify with the parameter in it) something like GOOGLE does I Guess.
Providing few links which will further help you so that you don't stumble upon any roadblocks when building the same
LocalStorage Issue
Hope that it help you in some way or other
Thanks