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.

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