Store User’s Personal Information with SUSI

In this blog, I discuss how SUSI.AI stores personal information of it’s users. This personal information is mostly about usernames/links to different websites like LinkedIn, GitHub, Facebook, Google/Gmail etc. To store such details, we have a dedicated API. Endpoint is :

https://api.susi.ai/aaa/storePersonalInfo.json

In this API/Servlet, storing the details and getting the details, both the aspects are covered. At the time of making the API call, user has an option either to ask the server for a list of available store names along with their values or request the server to store the value for a particular store name. If a store name already exists and a client makes a call with new/updated value, The servlet will update the value for that particular store name.

The reason you are looking at minimal user role as USER is quite obvious, i.e. these details correspond to a particular user. Hence neither we want someone writing such information anonymously nor we want this information to be visible to anonymous user until allowed by the user.

In the next steps, we start evaluating the API call made by the client. We look at the combination of the parameters present in the request. If the request is to fetch list of available stores, server first checks if Accounting object even has a JSONObject for “stores” or not. If not found, it sends an error message “No personal information is added yet.” and error code 420. Prior to all these steps, server first generates an accounting object for the user. If found, details are encoded as JSONObject’s parameter. Look at the code below to understand things fairly.

Accounting accounting = DAO.getAccounting(authorization.getIdentity());
        if(post.get("fetchDetails", false)) {
            if(accounting.getJSON().has("stores")){
                JSONObject jsonObject = accounting.getJSON().getJSONObject("stores");
                json.put("stores", jsonObject);
                json.put("accepted", true);
                json.put("message", "details fetched successfully.");
                return new ServiceResponse(json);
            } else {
                throw new APIException(420, "No personal information is added yet.");
            }
        }

If the request was not to fetch the list of available stores, It means client wants server to save a new field or update a previous value for that of a store name. A combination of If-else evaluates whether the call even contains required parameters.

if (post.get(“storeName”, null) == null) {
throw new APIException(422, “Bad store name encountered!”);
}

String storeName = post.get(“storeName”, null);
if (post.get(“value”, null) == null) {
throw new APIException(422, “Bad store name value encountered!”);
}

If request contains all the required data, then store name & value are extracted as key-value pair from the request.

In the next steps, since the server is expected to store list of the store names for a particular user, First the identity is gathered from the already present authorization object in “serviceImpl” method. If the server finds a “null” identity, It throws an error with error code 400 and error message “Specified User Setting not found, ensure you are logged in”.

Else, server first checks if a JSONObject with key “stores” exists or not. If not, It will create an object and will put the key value pair in the new JSONObject. Otherwise it would anyways do so.

Since these details are for a particular account (i.e. for a particular user), these are placed in the Accounting.json file. For better knowledge, Look at the code snippet below.

if (accounting.getJSON().has("stores")) {
                accounting.getJSON().getJSONObject("stores").put(storeName, value);
            } else {
                JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(true);
                jsonObject.put(storeName, value);
                accounting.getJSON().put("stores", jsonObject);
            }

            json.put("accepted", true);
            json.put("message", "You successfully updated your account information!");
            return new ServiceResponse(json);

Additional Resources :

Continue ReadingStore User’s Personal Information with SUSI

SUSI.AI User Roles and How to Modify Them

In this blog, I discuss what is ‘user-role’ in SUSI.AI, what are the various roles and how SUSI admins can modify/update a user’s roles.

What is User Role?

A UserRole defines the servlet access right. Not all users are allowed to access all the data and services. For  example, To list all the users, minimal user role expected is ADMIN. This classification of users are inspired by the wikipedia User Access Levels, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_access_levels.While querying SUSI, Users are classified into 7 different categories, namely :

  • BOT
  • ANONYMOUS
  • USER  
  • REVIEWER
  • ACCOUNTCREATOR
  • ADMIN
  • BUREAUCRAT

* Please see that these are as of the date of publish of this blog. These are subject to change, which is very unlikely.

If SUSI is active as a bot on some bot integrated platform (like line or kik), the user role assigned to it will be that of BOT. This user role just has technical access to the server.

All the users who are not logged in but interacting with SUSI are ANONYMOUS users. These are only subject to chat, login and signup. They may use forgot password service and reset password services as well.

Once a user login to the server, a token is generated and sent back to client to maintain the identity, hence acknowledging them as USER(s).

Users with role assigned as “REVIEWERS” are expected to manage the Skill CMS. There might be some dispute or conflict in a skill. REVIEWERS then take the access of skill data and finalise the conflict there itself for smooth functionality.

ADMIN users are those who have special rights with them. These are more like moderators with much special rights than any other user.

At the top level of the hierarchy are the BUREAUCRATS. These users have more rights than anyone. They can change role of any other user, override decision of any ADMIN user as well. Both admins and bureaucrats have the access to all the settings file on the server. They not only can look at the list, but also download and upload them. Now these users also have right to upgrade or downgrade any other user as well.

All these user roles are defined in UserRole.java file.

In each request received by the server, the user role of user making the request is compared with the minimal user role in getMinimalUserRole() method. This method is defined in AbstractAPIHandler which validates if a user is allowed to access a particular servlet or not.

private void process(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Query query) throws ServletException, IOException {
	// object initialisation and comparsions
// user authorization: we use the identification of the user to get the assigned authorization
        Authorization authorization = DAO.getAuthorization(identity);

        if (authorization.getUserRole().ordinal() < minimalUserRole.ordinal()) {
        	response.sendError(401, "Base user role not sufficient. Your base user role is '" + authorization.getUserRole().name() + "', your user role is '" + authorization.getUserRole().getName() + "'");
			return;
        }
// evaluations based on other request parameters.
}

Now that we know about what User Roles actually are, let us look at how the servlet which allows the users {with at least ADMIN login} to change user role of some other user works.

In the request, 2 parameters are expected. These are :

  • user : email id of the user whose role has to be changed.
  • role : new role which will be assigned to this user.

Using a switch case, we identify the user role which is requested. If role is found to be null or any other value apart from “bot”, “anonymous”, “user”, “reviewer”, “accountcreator”, “admin” or “bureaucrat”, an error with error code 400 and error message “Bad User role” is thrown.

In the next steps, server generates client identity in order to get the corresponding Authorization object. If the user is not found in the database, again an error is thrown with error code 400 and error message “role not found

ClientCredential credential = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login, userTobeUpgraded);
            ClientIdentity identity = new ClientIdentity(ClientIdentity.Type.email, credential.getName());
            if (!DAO.hasAuthorization(identity)) {
                throw new APIException(400, "Username not found");
            }

By now, server is clear with the user identity and new role to be assigned. Since the user role is defined in authorization.json file, we overwrite the existing user role and finally server sends back the new user role of the use

Authorization auth = DAO.getAuthorization(identity);
            try {
                auth.setUserRole(userRole);
            } catch (IllegalArgumentException e) {
                throw new APIException(400, "role not found");
            }

            // Print Response
            result.put("newDetails", auth.getJSON());
            result.put("accepted", true);
            result.put("message", "User role changed successfully!!");
            return new ServiceResponse(result);

 

Continue ReadingSUSI.AI User Roles and How to Modify Them

API to List All Users on SUSI.AI

In this blog, I discuss how the SUSI server helps in listing out all the users registered on it. The only role Susi server plays is, Whenever it receives a request at

http://api.susi.ai/aaa/getUsers.json

The server evaluate the parameters in the request, validates them and notify the user accordingly. API needs 2 parameters, out of which access-token is a necessary. 2nd parameter has to be one from the given list :

Parameter Data type

  • getPageCount boolean
  • GetUserCount boolean
  • Page integer

On the basis of this 2nd parameter, server gets to know what does the client with given access-token is requesting. Server evaluates the access-token and validates that if the access token belongs to a user with user role atleast ADMIN, then the request is valid and proceed further with fetching the data in next step. Otherwise, server responds with error code “401” and error message “Base user role not sufficient”. It is advisable for clients that before redirecting users to admin panel or any other service, Please hit

http://api.susi.ai/aaa/showAdminService.json

And check that whether the user logged in is allowed to access the admin panel or not. The servlet /showAdminService.json is quite easy to understand for even those new to programming.

Coming back to our topic, by now, server knows that this client is authorized to access the user list. But what all information does server needs to provide? In response to this request, server encodes following attributes in the JSON Array {which is part of JSON object} and sends it to user :

Attribute Description

  • Name Email-Id of the user
  • Anonymous Is this user anonymous or not
  • User Role User Role of the user
  • Confirmed User has verified account or not
  • Last Login IP Last IP from which login was requested
  • Last Login Time Time when last login request was made
  • Signup Time When did the user signed up

First things first, check if enough parameters are provided or not. If not, respond with error stating “Bad Request. No parameter present”. Otherwise, server does a general iteration which has to be done irrespective of the 2nd parameter.

First of all, get a list of all the authorized users using getAuthorizedClients method of Data Access Object class. This method picks up all the keys from authorized file {which are nothing but identification of clients from which requests are received}. Though it, skips those key which are host addresses (which can not be used to identify a user), it does includes all the email ids {which are obvious identification of users}.

public static Collection<ClientIdentity> getAuthorizedClients() {
		ArrayList<ClientIdentity> i = new ArrayList<>();
		for (String id: authorization.keys()) {
		    if(id.contains("host"))
		        continue;
			i.add(new ClientIdentity(id));
		}
		return i;
	}

In next steps, the collection is converted to suitable data types over which iterations are easy and can be converted to JSON objects and Arrays easily. After this, server evaluates which parameter is requested in the request. Let us pick each case one by one for simplicity.

  1. Client has requested number of pages in the request.

Server finds the size of keysArray {one of the object containing list of all the users}. Basic Mathematics to find out how many pages would be formed if size of each page is 50 elements and total elements are given.

if (call.get("getPageCount", false) == true) {
            int pageCount = keysArray.length % 50 == 0 ? (keysArray.length / 50) : (keysArray.length / 50) + 1;
            result.put("pageCount", pageCount);
            result.put("accepted", true);
            result.put("message", "Success: Fetched count of pages");
            return new ServiceResponse(result);
        }
  1. User count is requested

Simply return sizeof list which has list of all the users. List to be used can be anyone from authorized, keysArray or any other derivative of authorized collection. Code is quite easy.

  1.      List of users on any page is requested.

Get the page number and after applying unitary maths, you will figure out the elementary of this.

for (Client client : authorized) {
                JSONObject json = client.toJSON();
                ClientIdentity identity = new ClientIdentity(ClientIdentity.Type.email, client.getName());
                Authorization authorization = DAO.getAuthorization(identity);
                UserRole userRole = authorization.getUserRole();
                json.put("userRole", userRole.toString().toLowerCase());
                userList.add(json);
            }

If any other attribute that is required, it’s encoding will be done here.  For example, to get user role of a user, generate a client identity followed by retrieval of user role from it. Encode it and send back to user.

Other details like last login IP, last login time and signup time are also fetched from respective files.

Resources

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Change Password for SUSI Accounts Using Access Token and Email-ID

In this blog, I discuss how the SUSI server synchronizes with SUSI Accounts and SUSI webchat for users to Change Password. When a user logs in, the clients store the email id of the user along with the access token in cookies. These are stored once the client gets a positive login response from the server. Both of these are required at the time of making the final call. Web clients store the email id and access token in the following way.

cookies.set('loggedIn', loggedIn, { path: '/', maxAge: time });
cookies.set('emailId', email, { path: '/', maxAge: time });

First, the client has to ask the user to enter their current password. A javascript test is used to validate that at least 6 characters must be entered by the user. A similar test is run on the new password. But while confirming the password, client checks whether the user has entered the same password as new password or not. These are just the basics. In next stage (which is achieved only when all the above conditions are met), client encodes the email id (which it gets from cookies), current password, new password and the access token (which it again extracts from cookies).

Now, Client just has to make an ajax request to the server. The response is processed and sent back to the client. Let us now look at PasswordChange Servlet.

The base user role is defined as USER. Initial steps of the servlet are to extract the values form the request it receives. The values extracted from the request are in turn used to make a client’s identity. Before that, server checks if current and new password have same values or not. If not, then server returns a JSON response to user stating, “Your current password and new password matches”. Otherwise, it will continue its control flow as it is. Look at the code snippet below:

if(password.equals(newpassword)){
            result.put("message", "Your current password and new password matches");
            result.put("accepted", false);
            return new ServiceResponse(result);
        }

The reader here may think that they have discovered a hack. But they have not. Why? Because this is just the first step. In later stages, the hash of passwords are used to match to see whether the passwords match or not. To obtain a proper client identity, first a Client credentials object is made with support from the email id which is received in ‘changepassword’ attribute. Using the ClientCredentials object made above, an object of Authentication class is made. This object uses a method defined in its class to return a valid client identity. Using the client identity, value of password hash is extracted from the database along with the salt used to hash the password. If any error is encountered while extracting the client’s password hash value and/or salt value, an error is thrown towards the client, with a message stating “invalid credentials”.

ClientCredential pwcredential = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login, useremail);
            Authentication authentication = DAO.getAuthentication(pwcredential);
            ClientCredential emailcred = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login,
                authentication.getIdentity().getName());
            ClientIdentity identity = authentication.getIdentity();
            String passwordHash;
            String salt;

            try {
                passwordHash = authentication.getString("passwordHash");
                salt = authentication.getString("salt");
            } catch (Throwable e) {
                Log.getLog().info("Invalid password try for user: " + identity.getName() + " from host: " + post.getClientHost() + " : password or salt missing in database");
                result.put("message", "invalid credentials");
                throw new APIException(422, "Invalid credentials");
            }

Using the same salt value that was used earlier, a hash for password entered by the user will be generated which now matches  the previous value. This is the point where the hack you were thinking you found, failed. Again the server throws an error message if user’s credential did not match. Passwords are hard to handle and easy to guess. So here we have used quite many tests before changing them. Users are not allowed to use their email id as a password as well.

If the server is clear on all the above facts and tests, It finally generates a new hashed value of the password received in the parameter ‘newpassword’ and replaces the old hash value with the new one. To notify the clients that password change exited with a success response, it sends a JSON object with message “Your password has been changed!” and accepted flag set to true.

if (DAO.hasAuthentication(emailcred)) {
                    Authentication emailauth = DAO.getAuthentication(emailcred);
                    String newsalt = createRandomString(20);
                    emailauth.remove("passwordHash");
                    emailauth.put("passwordHash", getHash(newpassword, salt));
                    Log.getLog().info("password change for user: " + identity.getName() + " via newpassword from host: " + post.getClientHost());
                    result.put("message", "Your password has been changed!");
                    result.put("accepted", true);
                }

 

Additional Resources:

Wikipedia article: What is DAO?

Continue ReadingChange Password for SUSI Accounts Using Access Token and Email-ID

Download SUSI.AI Setting Files from Data Folder

In this blog, I will discuss how the DownloadDataSettings servlet hosted on SUSI server functions. This post also covers a step by step demonstration on how to use this feature if you have hosted your own custom SUSI server and have admin rights to it. Given below is the endpoint where the request to download a particular file has to be made.

/data/settings

For systematic functionality and workflow, Users with admin login, are given a special access. This allows them to download the settings files and go through them easily when needed. There are various files which have email ids of registered users (accounting.json), user roles associated to them (authorization.json), groups they are a part of (groups.json) etc. To list all the files in the folder, use the given below end point:

/aaa/listSettings.json

How does the above servlet works? Prior to that, let us see how to to get admin rights on your custom SUSI.AI server.
For admin login, it is required that you have access to files and folders on server. Signup with an account and browse to

/data/settings/authorization.json

Find the email id with which you signed up for admin login and change userRole to “admin”. For example,

{
	"email:test@test.com": {
		"permissions": {},
		"userRole": "user"
	}
}

If you have signed up with an email id “test@test.com” and want to give admin access to it, modify the userRole to “admin”. See below.

{
	"email:test@test.com": {
		"permissions": {},
		"userRole": "admin"
	}
}

Till now, server did not have any email id with admin login or user role equal to admin. Hence, this exercise is required only for the first admin. Later admins can use changeUserRole application and give/change/modify user roles for any of the users registered. By now you must have admin login session. Let’s see now how the download and file listing servlets work.
First, the server creates a path by locally referencing settings folder with the help of DAO.data_dir.getPath(). This will give a string path to the data directory containing all the data-settings files. Now the server just has to make a JSONArray and has to pass a String array to JSONArray’s constructor, which will eventually be containing the name of all the data/settings files. If the process is not successfull ,then, “accepted” = false will be sent as an error to the user. The base user role to access the servlet is ADMIN as only admins are allowed to download data/setting files,
The file name which you have to download has to be sent in a HTTP request as a get parameter. For example, if an admin has to download accounting.json to get the list of all the registered users, the request is to be made in the following way:

BASE_URL+/data/settings?file=file_name

*BASE_URL is the URL where the server is hosted. For standard server, use BASE_URL = http://api.susi.ai.

In the initial steps, Server generates a path to data/settings folder and finds the file, name of which it receives in the request. If no filename is specified in the API call, by default, the server sends accounting.json file.

File settings = new File(DAO.data_dir.getPath()+"/settings");
String filePath = settings.getPath(); 
String fileName = post.get("file","accounting"); 
filePath += "/"+fileName+".json";

Next, the server will extract the file and using ServletOutputStream class, it will generate properties for it and set appropriate context for it. This context will, in turn, fetch the mime type for the file generated. If the mime type is returned as null, by default, mime type for the file will be set to application/octet-stream. For more information on mime type, please look at the following link. A complete list of mime types is compiled and documented here.

response.setContentType(mimetype);
response.setContentLength((int)file.length());

In the above code snippet, mime type and length of the file being downloaded is set. Next, we set the headers for the download response and use filename for that.

response.setHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=" + fileName +".json");

All the manual work is done by now. The only thing left is to open a buffer stream, size of which has been defined as a class variable.
Here we use a byte array of size 4096 elements and write the file to client’s default download storage.

private static final int BUFSIZE = 4096;
byte[] byteBuffer = new byte[BUFSIZE];
             DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(new FileInputStream(file));
            while ((in != null) && ((length = in.read(byteBuffer)) != -1))
            {
                outStream.write(byteBuffer,0,length);
            }

            in.close();
            outStream.close();

All the above-mentioned steps are enclosed in a try-catch block, which catches an exception if any ,and logs it in the log file. This message is also sent to the client for appropriate user information along with the success or failure indication through a boolean flag. Do not forget to close the input and output buffers as it may lead to memory leaks and someone with proper knowledge of network and buffer stream would be able to steal any essential or secured data.

Additional Resources

Continue ReadingDownload SUSI.AI Setting Files from Data Folder

Password Recovery Link Generation in SUSI with JSON

In this blog, I will discuss how the SUSI server processes requests using JSON when a request for password recovery is made.. The blog post will also cover some parts of the client side implementation as well for better insight.
All the clients function in the same way. When you click on forget password button, client asks you that whether you want to recover password for your own custom server or the standard one. This choice of user defines the base URL where to make the forget password request. If you select custom server radio button, then you will be asked to enter the URL to your server, Otherwise standard base URL will be used. The API endpoint used will be

/aaa/recoverpassword.json

The client will make a POST request with “forgotemail” parameter containing the email id of the user making the request. Following the email id provided, server generates a client identity if and only if the email id is registered. If email id is not found in the database, server throws an exception with error code 422.

String usermail = call.get("forgotemail", null);
ClientCredential credential = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.passwd_login, usermail);
ClientIdentity identity = new ClientIdentity(ClientIdentity.Type.email, credential.getName());
if (!DAO.hasAuthentication(credential)) {
	throw new APIException(422, "email does not exist");
}

If the email id is found to be registered against a valid user in the database, call to a method is made which returns a random string of length passed in as a parameter. This returned random string acts as a token.
Below is the implementation of the createRandomString(int length) method.

public static String createRandomString(Integer length){
    	char[] chars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789".toCharArray();
    	StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    	Random random = new Random();
    	for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) {
    	    char c = chars[random.nextInt(chars.length)];
    	    sb.append(c);
    	}
    	return sb.toString();
    }

This method is defined in AbsractAPIHandler class. The function createRandomString(int length) initialises an array with alphabet (both upper and lower cases) and integers 1 to 10. An object of StringBuilder is declared and initialised in the fol loop.
Next, the token generated is hashed against the user’s email id. Since we have used a token of length 30, there will be 30! (30 factorial) combinations and hence chances of two tokens to be same is ver very low (approximately Zero). Validity for token is set for 7 days (i.e. one week). After that the token will expire and to reset the password a new token will be needed.

String token = createRandomString(30);
		ClientCredential tokenkey = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.resetpass_token, token);
		Authentication resetauth = new Authentication(tokenkey, DAO.passwordreset);
		resetauth.setIdentity(identity);
		resetauth.setExpireTime(7 * 24 * 60 * 60);
		resetauth.put("one_time", true);

Everything is set by now. Only thing left is send a mail to the user. For that we call a method sendEmail() of EmailHandler class. This requires 3 parameters. User email id, subject for the email, and the body of the email. The body contains a verification link. To get this verification link, getVerificationMailContent(String token) is called and token generated in the previous step is sent to it as a parameter.

String verificationLink = DAO.getConfig("host.url", "http://127.0.0.1:9000") + "/apps/resetpass/index.html?token=" + token;

The above command gets the base URL for the server and appends the link to reset password app along with the token it received in the method call. Rest of the body is saved as a template in /conf//templates/reset-mail.txt file. Finally, if no exception was catched during the process, the message “Recovery email sent to your email ID. Please check” and accepted = true is encoded into JSON data and sent to the client. If some exceptions was encountered, The exception message and accepted = false is sent to client.
Now the client processes the JSON object and notifies the user appropriately.

Additional Resources

Continue ReadingPassword Recovery Link Generation in SUSI with JSON

Reset Password for SUSI Accounts Using Verification Link

In this blog, I will discuss how the SUSI server interprets the verification link sent to your email id to reset SUSI account password. The email one receives to reset password looks like this :  

http://api.susi.ai/apps/resetpass/index.html?token={30 character long token}

*Original link contains a token of length of 30 characters. The link has been tampered for security purpose.

Taking a close look at the reset link, one would find it easy to decode. It simply contains path to an application on current SUSI Accounts hosting. Name of the application is “resetpass” for Reset Password. But what about the token in the link?

As soon as a user clicks on the link, the app is called and token is passed as a GET parameter. The app in background makes a call to the server where the token is evaluated for whether the token is hashed against some user’s email id and has not expired yet. Below is code of first step the client does which is to make a simple ajax call on Ready state.

$(document).ready(function()
{
	var passerr = false, confirmerr = false, tokenerr = false;

	// get password parameters
	var regex;
	var urltoken = getParameter('token');

	$.ajax(	"/aaa/recoverpassword.json", {
		data: { getParameters: true, token: urltoken },
		dataType: 'json',
		success: function (response) {
			regex = response.regex;
			var regexTooltip = response.regexTooltip;
			$('#pass').tooltip({'trigger':'focus', 'placement': 'left', 'title': regexTooltip});
			$('#status-box').text(response.message);
			tokenerr = false;
		},
		error: function (xhr, ajaxOptions, thrownError) {
			$('#status-box').text(thrownError);
			$('#status-box').addClass("error");
			$('#pass').prop( "disabled", true );
			$('#confirmpass').prop( "disabled", true );
			$('#resetbut').prop( "disabled", true );
			tokenerr = true;
		},
	});

As you can see the call is made to /aaa/recoverypassword.json end point with token as the request parameter. Now, the client has to just evaluate the JSON response and render the message for user accordingly. If this request returns an error then the error message is shown and the entries are disabled to enter the password. Otherwise, user email id is shown with green text and user can now enter new password and confirm it.

In next step, client simply evaluates the password and sends a query to server to reset it. Let us now look at how server functions and processes such requests.

//check if a token is already present
if (call.get("getParameters", false)) {
			if (call.get("token", null) != null && !call.get("token", null).isEmpty()) {
				ClientCredential credentialcheck = new ClientCredential(ClientCredential.Type.resetpass_token,
						call.get("token", null));
				if (DAO.passwordreset.has(credentialcheck.toString())) {
					Authentication authentication = new Authentication(credentialcheck, DAO.passwordreset);
					if (authentication.checkExpireTime()) {
						String passwordPattern = DAO.getConfig("users.password.regex", "^(?=.*\\d).{6,64}$");
						String passwordPatternTooltip = DAO.getConfig("users.password.regex.tooltip",
								"Enter a combination of atleast six characters");
						result.put("message", "Email ID: " + authentication.getIdentity().getName());
						result.put("regex", passwordPattern);
						result.put("regexTooltip", passwordPatternTooltip);
						result.put("accepted", true);
						return new ServiceResponse(result);
					}
					authentication.delete();
					throw new APIException(422, "Expired token");
				}
				throw new APIException(422, "Invalid token");
			} else {
				throw new APIException(422, "No token specified");
			}
		}

In the above code snippet, server evaluates the received token on the basis of three parameters. First it checks whether the token is provided or not. If not, it throws APIException with error code 422 and a message “No token specified”. If it passes the check, next it checks if the token passed is valid or not. If the token is invalid, it throws different APIException with same error code but different message “Invalid token”. Finally it checks whether the token is expired or not {life of each token is 7 days. After that, server marks it as expired}.

If all checks pass, the server finds the valid email id against which the token was hashed and sends it to user in JSON format. Now let us see how the final reset  password call is handled at the server.

If the token is valid  and still has life, user will be asked to enter new password and confirm it. Client locally checks whether new password and confirm password are same or not. It will now make a call to the below given servlet.

/aaa/resetpassword.json

Till now, server has already made the client identity using the token. Next it will check if the password matches regular expression or not. If not, it sends  an error message “Invalid Password” with error code 400.

if (DAO.hasAuthentication(emailcred)) {
			Authentication emailauth = DAO.getAuthentication(emailcred);
			String salt = createRandomString(20);
			emailauth.remove("salt");
			emailauth.remove("passwordHash");
			emailauth.put("salt", salt);
			emailauth.put("passwordHash", getHash(newpass, salt));
		}

Above code snippet shows what happens when new password matches the conditions of regular expression. The server will generate a random string of 20 characters and use it as the new salt to hash the password. It updates the salt and password hash for the particular user. Next time whenever user makes a login request, server will use the new salt-hash pair to authorise the user. Below given is a flowchart for better understanding.

Resources

 

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