[cgiapp] CAP::Authentication not working properly with CAP::Session

[Richard Jones]

Rhesa Rozendaal wrote:
> Richard Jones wrote:
>> A circular ref sounds like an interesting possibility though - how 
>> would I track something like that down?
> 
> Have a look at Devel::Cycle.

Rhesa,

Yes, that's done it - looks like I had at least 2, possibly 3, separate 
problems. The CAP::ErrorPage & CAP::DebugScreen plugins were interfering 
with flash message handling somewhere in my request cycle.

But even after removing these 2 plugins I still had problems with login 
failure (no entry in the sessions table), which only manifested itself 
after I removed DebugScreen. Thanks to an idea inspired by Bradley C 
Bailey in a private communication, I inserted a 
'Devel::Cycle::find_cycle($self)' in my cgiapp_init, and it identified a 
problem in Log::Dispatch LOG_DISPATCH_OPTIONS (I think):

Cycle (1):
	$LIMS::Controller::Search::A->{'__CFG'} => \%B
	          $B->{'log_dispatch'} => \%C
	  $C->{'LOG_DISPATCH_OPTIONS'} => \%D
	             $D->{'callbacks'} => \&E
	             $E variable $self => \$F
	                           $$F => \%LIMS::Controller::Search::A

Cycle (2):
	$LIMS::Controller::Search::A->{'__LOG_CONFIG'} => \%G 

	  $G->{'LOG_DISPATCH_OPTIONS'} => \%D
	             $D->{'callbacks'} => \&E
	             $E variable $self => \$F
	                           $$F => \%LIMS::Controller::Search::A

I'm not sure how to interpret Devel::Cycle output, but I think the item 
it's referring to is this:

LOG_DISPATCH_OPTIONS => {
   callbacks => sub {
     my %h = @_; chomp $h{message};
     my $timestamp = strftime "[%d-%b-%Y %H:%M:%S]", localtime;

     return sprintf "%s %s %s [%.4f sec]\n",
       $timestamp,
       uc $self->authen->username,
       $h{message},
       tv_interval $self->param('t0'), [gettimeofday];
}

I'll have to play around with this (can anyone see the problem here?), 
but I suspect the callbacks sub has something to do with it. I took the 
general idea from the CAP::LogDispatch pod. Removal of 
LOG_DISPATCH_OPTIONS makes the Devel::Cycle message go away, flash 
messages start to work properly using CAP::Flash (at last!!) and my app 
returns to normal, except for one remaining issue - when I use a 
$self->redirect call, I get the following error message:

prerun_mode() can only be called within cgiapp_prerun()! Error at 
/home/raj/perl5/lib/perl5/CGI/Application/Plugin/Redirect.pm line 24

This does not happen if CAP::DebugScreen is loaded. It turned out that a 
$SIG{__DIE__} error handler I was using in Dispatch was responsible (yet 
to identify why), but its malign effect was 'masked' if DebugScreen was 
also loaded, so I wonder whether DebugScreen is in general responsible 
for suppressing bugs in cgiapp applications, as that's 2 issues in my 
app that it apparently masked.
--
Richard Jones