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formpost should allow subprefix-based signatures

The signature used by formpost to validate a file upload should also be considered valid, if the object_prefix, which is used to calculate the signature, is a real subprefix of the object_prefix used in the action url of the form. With this, sharing of data with external people is made much easier via webbased applications, because just one signature is needed to create forms for every pseudofolder in a container.

Problem Description

At the moment, if one wants to use a form to upload data, the signature of the form must be calculated using the same object_prefix as the object_prefix in the url of the action attribute of the form. We propose to allow dynamically created forms, which are valid for all object_prefixes which contain a common prefix.

With this, one could generate one signature, which is valid for all pseudofolders in a container. This signature could be used in a webapplication, to share every possible pseudofolder of a container with external people. The user who wants to share his container would not be obliged to generate a signature for every pseudofolder.

Proposed Change

The formpost middleware should be changed. The code change would be really small. If a subprefix-based signature is desired, the hmac_body of the signature must contain a “subprefix” field to make sure that the creator of the signature explicitly allows uploading of objects into sub-pseudofolders. Beyond that, the form must contain a hidden field “subprefix”, too. Formpost would use the value of this field to calculate a hash based on that value. Furthermore, the middleware would check if the object path really contains this prefix.

Lets have one example: A user wants to share the pseudofolder “folder” with external users in a web-based fashion. He (or a webapplication) calcluates the signature with the path “/v1/my_account/container/folder” and subprefix “folder”:

import hmac
from hashlib import sha1
from time import time
path = '/v1/my_account/container/folder'
redirect = 'https://myserver.com/some-page'
max_file_size = 104857600
max_file_count = 10
expires = int(time() + 600)
key = 'MYKEY'
hmac_body = '%s\n%s\n%s\n%s\n%s\n%s' % (path, redirect,
max_file_size, max_file_count, expires, "folder")
signature = hmac.new(key, hmac_body, sha1).hexdigest()

If an external user is willing to post to the subfolder folder/subfolder/, a form which contains the above calculated signature and the hidden field subprefix would be used:

<![CDATA[
<form action="https://myswift/v1/my_account_container/folder/subfolder/"
    method="POST"
    enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="REDIRECT_URL"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="max_file_size" value="BYTES"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="max_file_count" value="COUNT"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="expires" value="UNIX_TIMESTAMP"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="signature" value="HMAC"/>
    <input type="hidden" name="subprefix" value="folder"
    <input type="file" name="FILE_NAME"/>
    <br/>
    <input type="submit"/>
</form>
]]>

Implementation

Assignee(s)

Primary assignee:

bartz

Work Items

Add modifications to formpost and respective test module.

Repositories

None

Servers

None

DNS Entries

None

Documentation

Modify documentation for formpost middleware.

Security

None

Testing

Tests should be added to the existing test module.

Dependencies

None