README

Larapoke

Keep your forms alive, avoid TokenMismatchException by gently poking your Laravel app.

Requirements

• PHP 7.4, 8.0 or later.
• Laravel 7.x, 8.x or later.

For older versions support, consider helping by sponsoring or donating.

Installation

Require this package into your project using Composer:

composer require darkghosthunter/larapoke

How does it work?

Larapoke pokes your App with an HTTP HEAD request to the /poke route at given intervals. In return, while your application renews the session lifetime, it sends an HTTP 204 status code, which is an OK Response without body.

This amounts to barely 800 bytes sent!

Automatic Reloading on CSRF token expiration

Larapoke script will detect if the CSRF session token is expired based on the last successful poke, and forcefully reload the page if there is Internet connection.

This is done by detecting when the browser or tab becomes active, or when the device user becomes online again.

This is handy in situations when the user laptop is put to sleep, or the phone loses signal. Because the session may expire during these moments, when the browser wakes up or the phone becomes online, the page is reloaded to get the new CSRF token.

Usage

There are three ways to turn on Larapoke in your app.

• auto (easy hands-off default)
• middleware
• manual

You can change the default mode using your environment file:

LARAPOKE_MODE=auto

auto

Just install this package and look at it go. This will push a global middleware that will look into all your Responses content where:

• the content is HTML,
• an input where csrf token is present,
• or the meta tag csrf-token, are present.

If there is any case-insensitive match, this will inject the Larapoke script in charge to keep the forms alive just before the </body> tag.

This mode won't inject the script on no-successful responses (anything not HTTP 2xx), like on errors or redirection.

It's recommended to use the other modes if your application has many routes or Responses with a lot of text.

middleware

This will disable the global middleware, allowing you to use the larapoke middleware only in the routes you explicitly decide.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Http\Controllers\Auth\RegisterController;

Route::get('register', [RegisterController::class, 'showForm'])
    ->middleware('larapoke');

This will forcefully inject the script, even if there is no form, into the route. You can also apply this to a route group.

Since a route group may contain routes without any form, you can add the detect option to the middleware which will scan the Response for a CSRF token and inject the script only if it finds one.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Http\Controllers\Auth\RegisterController;

Route::prefix('informationForms')
    ->middleware('larapoke:detect')
    ->group(function () {
        
        // Here it will be injected
        Route::get('register', [RegisterController::class, 'showForm']);
        
        // But not here since there is no form
        Route::get('status', [RegisterController::class, 'status']);
    });

This mode won't inject the script on no-successful responses (anything not HTTP 2xx), like on errors or redirection.

blade

The blade method allows you to use the @larapoke directive to inject the script anywhere in your view, keeping the forms of that Response alive.

<h2>Try to Login:</h2>
<form action="/login" method="post">
    @csrf
    @larapoke <!-- This script will run -->
    <input type="text" name="username" required>
    <input type="password" name="password" required>
    <button type="submit">Log me in!</button>
</form>
<h2>Or reset your password</h2>
<form action="/password" method="post">
    @csrf
    @larapoke <!-- This won't -->
    <input type="email" name="email" required>
    <button type="submit">I forgot my password!</button>
</form>

Don't worry if you use many @larapoke directives in your view, like in this example. The script can be injected multiple times, but only the first script will run and poke the site.

Configuration

For fine-tuning, you can publish the larapoke.php config file.

php artisan vendor:publish --provider=DarkGhostHunter\Larapoke\LarapokeServiceProvider

Let's examine the configuration array for Larapoke:

<?php return [
    'mode' => env('LARAPOKE_MODE', 'auto'),
    'times' => 4,
    'view' => 'larapoke::script',
    'poking' => [
        'route' => 'poke',
        'name' => 'larapoke',
        'domain' => null,
        'middleware' => ['web'],
    ]
];

Times (Interval)

How many times the poking will be done relative to the global session lifetime. The more times, the shorter the poking interval. The default 4 should be fine for any normal application.

For example, if our session lifetime is the default of 120 minutes:

• 3 times will poke the application each 40 minutes,
• 4 times will poke the application each 30 minutes,
• 5 times will poke the application each 24 minutes,
• 6 times will poke the application each 20 minutes, and so on...

So, basically, session lifetime / times = poking interval.

You should raise it if you expect your users to have a lot of doing nothing and may quit at any given time.

Script View

Larapoke uses its own Blade template to inject the script.

You can use other view with the script or overriding the default by creating a views/vendor/larapoke/script.blade.php file. The latter option doesn't need to publish the config file.

Why would you? Some people may want to change this because they want to use a Javascript HTTP library, minify the response, make it compatible for older browsers, or even create a custom Event when CSRF token expires.

The view receives three variables:

• $route: The relative route where the poking will be done.
• $interval: The interval in milliseconds the poking should be done.
• $lifetime: The session lifetime in milliseconds.

Poking

This is the array of settings for the poking route which receives the script HTTP HEAD Request.

<?php return [

    // ...

    'poking' => [
        'route' => 'poke',
        'name' => 'larapoke',
        'domain' => null,
        'middleware' => ['web'],
    ]
];

Route

The route (relative to the root URL of your application) that will be using to receive the pokes.

<?php 
return [
    'poking' => [
        'route' => '/dont-sleep'
    ],
];

The poke routes are registered before any set in your application. You could override the poke route with your own logic before responding with HTTP 204.

Name

Name of the route, to find the poke route in your app for whatever reason.

<?php 
return [
    'poking' => [
        'name' => 'my-custom-poking-route'
    ],
];

If you're using an array of domains or subdomains, this string will be appended to the route name.

Domains

In case you are using different domains of subdomains, it may be convenient to allow this route only under a certain one instead of all domains. A classic example is to make the poking available at http://user.myapp.com/poke but no http://myapp.com/poke.

• null (default): the poke route will be applied in every domain or subdomain.
• mydomain.com: the poke route will be applied only to that domain, like so: http://mydomain.com/poke.
• [array]: the poke route will be available only on the domains inside the array.

<?php 
return [
    'poking' => [
        'domain' => ['mysubdomain.myapp.com', 'myotherdomain.com']
    ],
];

If you use an array, the route names will be conveniently names using the domain name as a prefix, like myotherdomain.com-larapoke.

Middleware

The default Larapoke route uses the "web" middleware group, which is the default for handling web requests in a fresh installation. If you are using another group, or want to use a particular middleware, you can modify where here.

<?php 
return [
    'poking' => [
        'middleware' => ['auth:api', 'validates-ip', 'my-custom-middleware']
    ],
];

License

This package is licenced by the MIT License.