RememberMe

RememberMe is a Coldbox module designed to work in conjunction with your authentication system to "remember" and automatically log in users on subsequent website visits.

Requirements

• Lucee 5+
• Adobe ColdFusion 2016+
• Coldbox 6+
• Cbauth or your own authentication provider

Installation

Within Commandbox type:

box install rememberMe

Copy over the configuration object below into your /config/Coldbox.cfc moduleSettings section.

rememberMe = {
    userServiceClass = "",
    tokenEncryptKey = "",
    days = 30
}

You will need to specify a userServiceClass that implements the method retrieveUserById(). You will also need to generate a unique encryption key that will be used when generating tokens. Hint: You can generate a valid random key by executing the following code generateSecretKey("AES", 256).

Make sure your CFML datasource has a database table with the following columns (currently tested with MSSQL Server):

column name	type
id	int
createdDate	datetime
modifiedDate	datetime
userId	int
selector	varchar(35)
hashedValidator	varchar(32)
ipAddress	varchar(45)
userAgent	varchar(255)
expirationDate	datetime
lastUsedDate	datetime

Usage

RememberMe automatically injects a remember() helper into all Coldbox interceptors. Here's an example of how you might utilize RememberMe on the Coldbox preProcess() interceptor method on an app that uses cbauth for their authentication provider:

function preProcess( event, interceptData, buffer, rc, prc ) {
    
    // if the user is not logged in, and the rememberMe cookie exists, attempt to recall the user
    if ( 
        !auth().isLoggedIn() && // <-- cbAuth method
        remember().cookieExists() 
    ) {
        
        try {
            
            // attempt to recall the user 
            // if successful, returns a user object from your `userServiceClass`
            var user = remember().recallMe();

            // verify the user exists and log them in using cbauth
            if ( user.isLoaded() ) {
                auth().login( user ); // <-- cbAuth method
            }

        // if the token is invalid, forget the user and cleanup bad cookies
        } catch( InvalidToken e ) {
            remember().forgetMe();
        }

    }

Known Issues

Sometimes the first load of an app will throw an error stating that remember cannot be found. I believe this has to do with a "chicken and egg" problem where sometimes every Coldbox dependency is loaded when the first onSessionStart() method executes. I recommend using preProcess() instead of onSessionStart() to avoid this issue for now.

Intercetion Points

onRecall

This is a custom interception point that fires when the remember().recall() method is called. You can use this to add custom logic, such as logging or additional processing, during the recall process.

InterceptData

Name	Description
user	The user object returned by the remember().recall() method.
userId	The ID of the user returned by the remember().recall() method.

Future Development Roadmap

• Testbox integration + test-harness setup.
• Get community feedback for improving the module and documentation.
• Automatically create table in datasource if missing.
• Ability to customize the table name based on config.
• Learn how to implement building/versioning like other Coldbox modules.
• Utilize some interceptor methods for custom behavior.
• Add some type of database cleanup operation to purge old records