Request params not parsed in Ring/Compojure app

Question

I am writing a web app using Ring and Compojure, and Friend library for authorization. Recently I've made some changes to the project, and now I am not able to fetch request parameters any more.

What I used to do is this:

; Routes definition
(defroutes app-routes
  (POST "/*.do" request 
    (insert-data (:params request))))

; Middlewares
(def secured-routes
  (handler/site
    (-> app-routes
        wrap-params
        (friend/authenticate friend-params-map))))

and form/URL parameters would be parsed into a Clojure map. Right now this does not seem to work, and (:params request) contains maps of the form

{:* <request-url>}

with a single :* key. If I try to (println request), a get a Clojure map with lots of key-value pairs, among which there are

:body #object[org.eclipse.jetty.server.HttpInputOverHTTP 0x6ef9a9e1 HttpInputOverHTTP@6ef9a9e1]

that seem to contain request data, correct? But how do I fetch those?

Previously I was just using wrap-params middleware as described above, and it worked.

One approach that works is invoking (body-string request) in each handler, that will return a stringified version of request body. But it would be great to get an automatically parsed Clojure map for each url handler. Obviously, I'm missing something.

Can someone please advise? I would also be happy to find out more how to debug those kinds of handler issues myself - meaning, debug middleware chains and find out why wrap-params does not get invoked or is invoked improperly.

Thanks!

UPDATE: per @nberger's comment, i've tried changing secured-routes definition to this:

(def secured-routes
  (-> app-routes
      (wrap-defaults site-defaults)
      (friend/authenticate friend-params-map)))

but now the login page does not work at all (authentication stopped working). After moving wrap-defaults after friend/authenticate as suggested in the comment, Friend complains in big font about Invalid anti-forgery token (???)

Have you tried removing the friend/authenticate middleware? You could also remove the explicit wrap-params as compojure.handler/site already includes it. It would be great to have a minimal example. By the way, compojure.handler is deprecated, you might want to use ring-defaults — nberger
Thank you for comment. I've updated the original question. I didn't know that handler/site was deprecated. — siphiuel
friend-authenticate has to be wrapped by wrap-defaults, because it assumes the params are already in form-params or in params, so you should have: (-> app-routes (wrap-defaults site-defaults) (friend/authenticate friend-params-map)) — nberger
Sorry, you should have: (-> app-routes (friend/authenticate friend-params-map) (wrap-defaults site-defaults)) — nberger
ring-defaults include anti-forgery protection by default. You should normally use it, but if you want to disable it you can use (wrap-defaults (assoc-in site-defaults [:security :anti-forgery] false)) instead of just (wrap-defaults site-defaults). See the readme for all the options — nberger

siphiuel siphiuel · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-21T06:55:56

I've found the issue. In the front-end code, POSTs to *.do have been modified to send application/json content-type. Below is the jQuery's ajax call that was used:

$.ajax({ 
  url: '/saveInput.do',
  type: 'POST',
  contentType: 'application/json; charset=UTF-8',
  data: JSON.stringify(formValues),
});

I've modified it to

$.ajax({ 
  url: '/saveInput.do',
  type: 'POST',
  data: formValues,
});

and it works now. Moreover, original Ajax call with JSON content-type can be preserved by including wrap-json-params middleware from ring-json, so that routes definition finally becomes:

(def secured-routes
  (-> app-routes
      (friend/authenticate friend-params-map)
      (wrap-defaults (assoc-in site-defaults [:security :anti-forgery] false))
      wrap-json-params))

I've opted for the latter. @nberger - thank you for help!

Request params not parsed in Ring/Compojure app

1 Answers