Question

I’d like to be able to use a BodyParser on an authenticated request and I’m having trouble figuring out how to do that if my Authentication is set up like the ZenTasks example.

My authentication method,

def IsAuthenticated(f: => String => Request[AnyContent] => Result) = {
  Security.Authenticated(username, onUnauthorized) { user =>
    Action(request => f(user)(request))
  }
}

def HasRole(role: List[String])
  (f: => String => Request[AnyContent] => Result) = IsAuthenticated {
  user => request => if (role.contains(getRole(user))) {
    f(user)(request) // This function returns the result.
  } else {
    Results.Forbidden
  }
}

My controller method,

def controller = HasRole(List("admin")) { user => _ => { 
  Action(parse.temporaryFile){ implicit request =>
    request.body.moveTo(new File("/tmp/filepath"))
    Redirect(routes.home)
  }
}

This is the error I’m seeing,

[error]  found   : play.api.mvc.Action[play.api.libs.Files.TemporaryFile]
[error]  required: play.api.mvc.Result
[error]       Action(parse.temporaryFile){ implicit request =>
[error]                                  ^

Here is a related question: parse.json of authenticated play request

This person found a workaround, and I believe there is one for the temporary file example as well, but I’d like to know how (or why) what I’m doing is not working.

Answer 1

I believe I’ve figured this out, mainly because I left some details out of the original question that I did not realize were important.

The problem was that I was wrapping an Action { Action { } } because the IsAuthenticated method already had a call to the Action function inside it. What I ended up doing was overloading the IsAuthenticated function with a method that took BodyParser as a parameter. Because I am using the TemporaryFile method, which is not a subclass of AnyContent, I also had to change the request type.

Now, this is what my Secured trait looks like:

def IsAuthenticated(f: => String => Request[Any] => Result) = {
  Security.Authenticated(username, onUnauthorized) { user =>
    Action(request => f(user)(request))
  }
}

def IsAuthenticated(b: BodyParser[Any] = parse.anyContent)
  (f: => String => Request[Any] => Result) = {
  Security.Authenticated(username, onUnauthorized) { user =>
    Action(b)(request => f(user)(request))
  }
}

def HasRole(role: List[String])(b: BodyParser[Any] = parse.anyContent)
  (f: => String => Request[Any] => Result) = IsAuthenticated(b) {
  user => request => getRole(user) match {
    case Some(r) if role.contains(r) => f(user)(request)
    case _ => Results.Forbidden
  }
}

And this is what my controller looks like:

def controller = HasRole(List("admin"))(parse.temporaryFile) { user => request =>
  request.body match {
    case b:TemporaryFile => b.moveTo(new File("/tmp/file"))
    case _ => Status(404)
  }
}

Hope this helps someone else!