I did not like the idea that it was the Go server who should set values
such as request.user or set the role, because this is mostly something
that only the database wants for itself, such as when calling logout. I
am also planning to use these setings for row security with the user’s
id, that the Go application has no need for, but with the current
approach i would need to return it from check_cookie so that it can
return it back to the database when acquiring the connection.
I would have used the same function to set the settings and the role,
but security definer functions—obviously in retrospect—can not set the
role, because then could switch to any role of the user that defined the
function, not the roles they are member of. Thus, a new function.
I did not want to do that every time i needed the database connection
within the same request, because it would perform the same operations
each time—it is the same cookie, afterall—, so new connections are
request scoped and passed along in the context.
I had to choose between [1], [2], and [3].
As far as i could find, [1] is not easy to work with templates[4] and at
the moment is not maintained[5].
Both [2] and [3] use the same approach to be used from within templates:
you have to define a FuncMap with template functions that call the
message catalog. Also, both libraries seems to be reasonably
maintained, and have packages in Debian’s repository.
However, [2] repeats the same mistakes that POSIX did with its
catalogs—using identifiers that are not the strings in the source
language—, however this time the catalogs are written in JSON or YAML!
This, somehow, makes things worse….
[3], the one i settled with, is fine and decently maintained. There are
some surprising things, such as to be able to use directly the PO file,
and that it has higher priority over the corresponding MO, or that the
order of parameters is reversed in respect to gettext. However, it uses
a saner format, and is a lot easier to work with than [3].
The problem, of course, is that xgettext does not know how to find
translatable strings inside the template. [3] includes a CLI tool
similar to xgettext, but is not a drop-in replacement[6] and does not
process templates.
The proper way to handle this would be to add a parser to xgettext, but
for now i found out that if i surround the call to the translation
functions from within the template with parentheses, i can trick
xgettext into believing it is parsing Scheme code, and extracts the
strings successfully—at least, for what i have tried. Had to add the
keyword for pgettext, because Schemed does not have it, but at least i
can do that with command line parameters.
For now i left only Spanish and Catalan as the two available languages,
even though the source text is written in English, because that way i
can make sure i do not leave strings untranslated.
[1]: https://golang.org/x/text
[2]: https://github.com/nicksnyder/go-i18n
[3]: https://github.com/leonelquinteros/gotext
[4]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/39954
[5]: https://github.com/golang/go/issues/12750
[6]: https://github.com/leonelquinteros/gotext/issues/38
At first i thought that i would need to implement sessions, the ones
that keep small files onto the disk, to know which user is talking to
the server, but then i realized that, for now at least, i only need a
very large number, plus the email address, to be used as a lookup, and
that can be stored in the user table, in a separate schema.
Had to change login to avoid raising exceptions when login failed
because i now keep a record of login attemps, and functions are always
run in a single transaction, thus the exception would prevent me to
insert into login_attempt. Even if i use a separate procedure, i could
not keep the records.
I did not want to add a parameter to the logout function because i was
afraid that it could be called from separate users. I do not know
whether it is possible with the current approach, since the settings
variable is also set by the same applications; time will tell.
The whole application will need the same search_path, so it is wasteful
to do that in each handler.
It is possible to pass the search path as a parameter to the database’s
connection string, but then everyone would need to remember to do that,
and update the configuration in case i add another schema.
Similarly, i need to change the user’s role to match her
permissions—which are not in yet—, but this time i need it each time a
handler requests a connection from the pool, because each time the
connection is returned to the pool i reset the role back to the initial,
that hopefully will be authenticator.
I do not yet know how i will need to organize them, if indeed i need to
organize them to a finer granularity than single files, so there is no
point on doing Java-like packages.
I’ve tried to make RPM packages of numerus and pgx/v4 for AlmaLinux, so
install in a virtual server, but i was unable to break a build cycle
between golang/x/text, required by pgx, and golang/x/tools both a
dependency and a dependee of golang/x/text: once tools finished
building, it would trigger a new build for text, that in turn would
trigger a build for all its dependences, including tools.
At the end i had to create a Debian repository, because they already
have all the packages, even though i had to back port pgx/v4 from
Testing to bullseye. I did not want to try my luck with writting
packages for pgx/v5, so v4 it is.
This is a very rough test to actually check the login function outside
pgTAP; it is very ugly, in both design and code, and (i hope) does not
reflect future quality.
I was about to use Echo[0] as a “web framework”, but something feels
wrong when using a framework with Go—i do not know what. I actually
tried it and was even more put off by the JSON-formatted logger that can
not be disabled; i was already losing control of the application!
I created the folder following the apparently de facto guidelines for Go
projects, and i see no problem with mixing Go’s folders with Sqitch’s:
both are part of the same application and there are not conflicts.
[0]: https://echo.labstack.com/
[1]: https://github.com/golang-standards/project-layout
jordi fita mas