Category: First Page

bookmark_borderCustom iCalendar data in Kronolith & Nag

Posted on by Ralf

The iCalendar exchange format is everywhere in Horde’s calendar (kronolith) and tasks (nag) apps. It is offered for manual import/export. It is the centerpiece of the CalDAV synchronisation protocol and various APIs of these apps. The format also plays a role in email invitiations and updates sent via iTip. It is a very powerful and well-accepted format. This is, unfortunately, a little bit of a problem. Fortunately, we also have a solution

The iCalendar format was originally defined by the IETF. They released RFC 2445 back in 1998. While Horde still understands that format, a newer version 2.0 was defined in RFC 5545 in 2009. An extension to the 2.0 standard was released in 2016: RFC 7986 defines additional attributes needed to describe related conferencing software resources or other technical aspects.

Server and client software has always been free to add custom attributes to the different components of the standard. For example, Horde Kronolith stores and reads a special attribute X-HORDE-ATTENDEE to mark event attendees who have a horde user attached. Mozilla uses attributes like X-MOZ-LASTACK and MS Exchange comes with a long list of custom attributes, among them X-CALEND. Understanding these attributes when processing a icalendar file is optional. However, servers are expected not to silently drop attributes they do not understand.

Up until now, both Kronolith and Nag did support a wide range of attributes, but far from all. Events are reconstructed from calendar backend contents. Unsupported data simply gets lost. As it is technically impossible to know all attributes anybody out there may use, the opposite definition was needed: An attribute is an “other” attribute if it is not in the list of attributes the app already handles. Both apps got a catalog of attributes they understand and a property for storing everything else. Support for actually storing and retrieving this data is currently limited to the SQL backend. I do not currently invest time in Kolab support, maybe I will never do that.

Also, while I took care to ensure that normal editing via the UI will not break the “other” data, I did not cross check with scenarios where ActiveSync is involved. Please report bugs as you find them.

CalDAV event Storage

For kronolith, an optional storage of unmodified caldav events as received has been added during development. I am not sure if I will keep this or remove it again. It is useful for debugging various support scenarios but under normal operation, it is not required. It may be useful for creating a cache of external caldav calendars though.

Extend to Turba Addressbook

Turba Addressbook uses a similar data format vcard and implements the sister protocol CardDAV. Things are indeed a little more complicated. There are three relevant versions of vcard 2.1, 3.0 and 4.0 and multiple extension RFCs with additional contact attributes exist. Worse, there is a host of X- attributes from popular desktop addressbook vendors, Evolution, Kontact, Thunderbird, Android, MS Exchange/Outlook… There are at least two different ways to represent contact groups and the whole thing is a little messy. But the real problem lies with Turba’s highly configurable nature. At least two backends need to be upgraded: Both SQL storage and LDAP play a key role in typical Turba use cases. The exact layout of each addressbook can be different even inside the same installation. The list of vcard attributes considered as natively supported needs to be calculated for each addressbook and additional attributes maybe need to be stored outside of the specific backend. This will take some time and consideration.

Still, Turba’s tendency to forget what it does not care for needs to be addressed. Otherwise users risk losing attributes on sync.

bookmark_borderMaintaina Horde switches to openSUSE LEAP

Posted on by Ralf

Our Horde docker images have switched over from Tumbleweed to openSUSE LEAP once again.

Recently our container build CI job in github.com broke down unexpectedly. An investigation showed that Tumbleweed’s core libraries, especially libc, were too new for the CI’s build system, based on Ubuntu LTS.

This is the second time we abandoned the Tumbleweed basis for Horde docker containers. OpenSUSE Leap 15.3 uses a relatively old, but well-maintained, set of base libraries. Both Leap and Tumbleweed deliver PHP 7.4 as a basis for Horde. In both systems, we skip the packaged composer version for a static pick which we will update from time to time. We may switch over to packaged composer if we feel confident.

For users and administrators of the image, both Tumbleweed and Leap 15.3 should feel more or less the same. For end users of the delivered horde setup, there should not be any downsides. We will switch back to the Tumbleweed image in a while when we have picked a more recent version of Ubuntu.

bookmark_borderCardDAV vs MacOS Contacts

Posted on by Ralf

In case you run Horde, NextCloud or other CalDAV/CardDAV server products, sooner or later you will encounter users who want to use the MacOS Addressbook application, “Contacts”, to access their server contacts. As of MacOS 11.5.2, the apple contacts app only supports one addressbook per principal. It will pick the first addressbook and use it for reading and writing. Unfortunately, the first addressbook exposed by Horde’s carddav system often is the favourite recipients addressbook. This is readonly.

There is no real solution to this yet. You can try to trick your carddav server into having the “right” addressbook as the first in the list but this is about it.

If anybody has an idea how to tackle this limitation without breaking carddav for all the other clients, please let me know.

bookmark_borderCan Horde’s internal API use PSR-7 Messages?

Posted on by Ralf

The Horde Inter-App system has been around since Horde 3.

Horde Inter-App messages are addressed by a two part string. The first part, followed by a slash character, is called the API. The second part after the slash is called the method. Registry can delegate complete APIs to an application or a list of complete API/method strings. In the latter format, a certain API/method combination can be assigned to one app even if the API in general is assigned to another app. The API is implemented by a class $application_Api in file Api.php inside each horde application. That application class methods and their signatures are the methods exposed by the Inter-App API. There are some meta arrays controlling further details but let’s ignore them. All but a few APIs only take arrays and primitives (string, number, bool) as parameters and issue them as return types. This is because the RPC layer eventually receives and emits HTTP messages, which are just text. Only those Inter-App API methods which are meant to be strictly internal will consume and emit PHP Objects.

PSR-7 messages and PSR-15 handlers/middlewares are an interop standard. They do not make a lot of assumptions about the underlying implementation. They have been used to implement REST solutions as well as old style server-driven dynamic websites. The request objects contain an URI to a resource and will eventually result in a response object. In between there is usually a broker piece called a router, which analysis URI and other request parameter to assign it to the proper implementation code or chain of code pieces, called middlewares. Anywhere in that chain, an answer is created and sent back to the caller. The request and response bodies are streams of text or binary data, as the request and response are essentially text messages.

At first glance, this is an easy match. The Registry mediates between the message sent by the caller and the code which handles it. We could call it the router. The API class with its methods could be seen as a set of handlers. The PSR-7 ServerRequest object represents a HTTP request, but it also allows arbitrary attributes attached to the actual request data. These attributes may be any PHP value, including objects.

There are some details to keep in mind though.

The inter-app API has little definition on a data contract. It predates PHP method parameter types and return types. In traditional code, users could feed just about anything into the inter-app API and the implementation would need to guard against any value expected or unexpected. Inter-App API just assumes the caller is eligible to call. Authentication is delegated to the existing PHP session or to the RPC setup, authorization control must happen in the called code. That may lead to bloated, repetitive code in the implementation.

As each app has only one API class file, it is not currently possible to implement two different methods on different APIs if the same app handles it. If you have two different APIs clients/get and contracts/get and both are implemented in the same app, they will end up in the same code path. The way around it is with calls like clients/getClients and contracts/getContracts, but this is just ugly.

The rampage/routes/http_server stack can easily discern a GET /clients/ call and a GET /contracts call, but it only works inside a specific app. Setting up a separate API set of routes, we can easily have calls abstracted from the implementing app. The system of handlers and middlewares allows to delegate authentication and authorization checks outside of the actual implementation of an endpoint. This reduces repetitive boilerplate. One big issue remains. As of now, Inter-App can return native PHP objects to the caller. PSR-7 messages allow Attributes on the ServerRequestInterface but there is no equivalent in the ResponseInterface. Inter-App can carry objects (for internal calls) or serialisation-friendly nested arrays until it hits the RPC layer. This layer will turn it into a text structure, say XML or JSON. How would we do that in ResponseInterface implementations? How would that make the implementation reusable for a REST interface, app-internal AJAX or other code?

A vision of convergence

Bringing together new capabilities and existing system participants is tricky. A new RPC and Inter-App system should integrate with the old interface, it should not just stand beside it. Having two different Inter-App layers would be confusing, abandoning the old one right now would be unnecessary stress on developers’ time budgets.

As an inter-app user, I want to use $registry->call(‘method’, [params1, param2]) or $registry->api->method($param1, $param2…) as I did before.

As an RPC user, I want to call \Horde_Rpc::request('api/method', $params, $options) as I did before. I do not care what happens in the background.

As an application developer exposing an API, I do not want to give up Api.php right now, it has to work with the new stack as good or bad as it did before.

As a developer of new apps and features, I want to leverage extended capabilities. I want to be able to implement two distinct APIs using the same method names. I want to be able to return native objects, even serialisation-unfriendly ones with php resources, along with a serialisation-friendly message to use in RPC, Rest or other HTTP use cases. I do not want to be restricted to two levels of API/method. I want to re-use middleware I already built for the frontend AJAY.

As a distributed app developer, I want to define API resources and have them served either internally or by external microservices transparantly over http requests.

For the future, I would like some degree of introspection and possibly some guidance on allowed or required request parameters.

As an integrator, I want to securely communicate with only partially set up horde instances to finish or upgrade setups by firing HTTP requests.

Implementation approach

The horde-deployment project includes a route from webroot/api/ to a global API router managed by the horde base app. This API router is first populated by the Registry and then supplemented by a config/routes.api.php file in each registry app.

Regardless of the calling context, a cascade of middlewares sets attributes for the called API/route, the parameters, the resolved implementation and the outcome of already happened authentication checks. The implementation is either an adapter middleware calling an app’s Api class or an actual implementation middleware/stack. It will write the return values and other state into an attribute digested by the bottom of stack. In case of Inter-App, a token response is returned and the actual data structures are taken from the handler and returned to the caller. Real RPC backends generate appropriate headers and stream body for response. The response can possibly be processed further as it returns back to top of stack, for example gzip compressed or logged or trigger metrics updates.

bookmark_borderMove config out of webroot for Horde 6

Posted on by Ralf

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:


    

  • default registry.php file
    • 

  • default prefs.php file
    • 

  • routes.php file
    • 

  • conf.xml definition file
    • 

  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
    • 

  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)
    • 



These items reside outside the webroot:


    

  • conf.php file
    • 

  • registry.local.php
    • 

  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
    • 

  • horde.local.php
    • 

  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
    • 

  • registry.d/ snippets
    • 

  • conf.d/ snippets
    • 

  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
    • 

  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)
    • 







Support for existing installations






There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.






To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.


The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.




Outlook






Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.


Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:


    

  • default registry.php file
    • 

  • default prefs.php file
    • 

  • routes.php file
    • 

  • conf.xml definition file
    • 

  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
    • 

  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)
    • 



These items reside outside the webroot:


    

  • conf.php file
    • 

  • registry.local.php
    • 

  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
    • 

  • horde.local.php
    • 

  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
    • 

  • registry.d/ snippets
    • 

  • conf.d/ snippets
    • 

  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
    • 

  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)
    • 







Support for existing installations






There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.






To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.


The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.




Outlook






Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.


Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

  • Default assumptions in the Horde registry for where apps are located were wrong
  • Javascript from library packages needed to be web visible and Horde needed to know their path and webroot
  • Custom Themes location and webroot
  • Composer2 would wipe custom configuration during software updates
  • Composer2 would wipe the static dir during software updates

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

  • Point to /web/$app/ for an app’s fileroot
  • Fix the webroot assumption, too from $webroot/horde/$app to $webroot/$app
  • Make horde search for themes in /web/themes/$app/ rather than /web/horde/$themes and /web/horde/$app/$themes/
  • Make horde load horde and library javascript files from /web/js/horde rather than /web/horde/js

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation

These items remain in the config/ dir:

  • default registry.php file
  • default prefs.php file
  • routes.php file
  • conf.xml definition file
  • other defaults files like backends.php, nls.php
  • a stub for hooks (maybe we can get away without it)

These items reside outside the webroot:

  • conf.php file
  • registry.local.php
  • routes.local.php (if any, I have never seen it used)
  • horde.local.php
  • other overrides like prefs.local.php, backends.local.php
  • registry.d/ snippets
  • conf.d/ snippets
  • all vhost-specific overrides like conf-www.example.com.php, registry-www.example.com.php, prefs-www.example.com.
  • Hooks Files. (We need to ensure correct autoloading though)

Support for existing installations

There is currently no software level support for upgrading a Horde 5 installation from pear or git-tools to a Horde 6 installation. There is no Horde 6 release by Horde Upstream yet. Installations of the maintaina horde fork are treated as existing installations of Horde 6 for the purpose of this document.

To allow a smooth transition, horde-installer-plugin will be changed in this way:
For each file in the presets dir, check if it exists in the old and new location.
Normally, the old dir should not hold a copy of the file unless it is delivered by the package itself.
If the new /var/config/ folder is writeable, put the file there. Create subdirectories as necessary.
Finally, symlink all files from /var/config to corresponding old location, even if they are not from preset.

The logic for reading configs should prefer the new location, if available, but fall back to the old location. This must be addressed in some code paths in horde/core and possibly also somewhere in the individual apps.
Writing files should always go to the new location, though in theory the symlink should take care of that.

Outlook

Moving configuration out of the web-visible and composer-owned area is a major step forward. Future developments may reduce the web-visible surface of a horde installation even further.

Implementation progress

  • https://github.com/maintaina-com/horde-deployment as of 1.0.0 includes the var/config/ dir
  • https://github.com/maintaina-com/horde-installer-plugin as of 2.2.1 contains a working implementation. Configs from /presets/ are written to /var/config/ and symlinked to their traditional locations.

bookmark_borderHorde Authentication: Revisited

Posted on by Ralf

Horde Authentication as it is today has been devised more than a decade ago and it is surprisingly complex. Use cases and requirements have evolved. In a previous article, I introduced basic authentication and authorization needs and how they can be overwhelmingly complex to get right.

I will not go into details of how it currently works. Jan Schneider has done a very good series on this topic:

These articles written back in 2011 still reflect how things are done.

To sum it up:

  • There are different concepts of being logged in “to horde” and being logged in to a specific app
  • Horde uses Authentication Drivers for the initial login
  • Authentication Drivers offer different capabilities with impact on the ability to list or search users, create new users, change password etc.
  • Initial login can be either explicit through a redirect to login screen or implicit, called “transparent authentication”
  • While returning Horde sessions are transparent, resource backends like IMAP, LDAP, FTP etc may still need an explicit login per request.
  • Login sets up some orthogonal aspects of Horde like
    • presentation type (Dynamic, Traditional, Mobile, Minimal) – some restrictions and defaulting logic apply
    • Display Language and Localisation – also with some defaults of its own
    • Theme selection

Matters are complicated by Horde’s modular nature and a plethora of configuration options. Accessing the same installation through two different virtual hostnames may yield different authentication backends and different defaults or freedom in selecting themes.

Back when these design choices were made, nobody expected modern complexities to be relevant for a web application:

  • Normal users wanting to integrate desktop applications through CalDAV
  • Use of external trust providers and identity solutions like SAML, OpenID Connect
  • Prevalence of API use cases where other applications interact with Horde
  • Single Page Applications and Mobile Apps interacting with Horde like a remote system
  • Use of scope-reduced throwaway tokens to authenticate for limited purposes
  • Share token based guest access to specific resources

Let’s inspect some use cases.

I may want to authenticate my session by an external ID provider but still have some means of searching and listing other users when granting permissions to my resources.

I may want to rate-limit login attempts with bad passwords regardless of the authentication backend’s capabilities.
The same is true for enforcing a maximum passsword age.

When I make a REST API call, I want to explicitly avoid any state carried over from a previous request. Any session management is unwelcome overhead. Any logic dealing with presentation is just stealing response time.

Some APIs may accept either a Basic Authentication via username/password or some token ID.

Seeing the current number of unread mails on a portal page is welcome, but having to do an expensive imap login when I actually just look at the calendar is less desirable. More so, when the permission system does not even allow me to access the email component and the imap login is failing on each API call.

It seems important to isolate the different concerns from each other and break the mighty authentication logic into smaller, independent parts:

  • A User Repository for searching and listing known users
  • Actual validity check of a set of credentials, resulting in identification
  • User creation and deletion
  • Renaming existing users
  • Change Password to a chosen new password
  • Reset Password without choice

The implementation of these concerns should be strictly isolated from other aspects

  • Application Bootstrap: Setup of an environment, localization, specific view
  • normalization of a provided username, enforcing lowercase, adding a default domain or other
  • How the credential is delivered: The LDAP or SQL backend must not care if the password comes via HTML Form, HTTP Header or some CLI option.
  • Authorization related aspects like checking password age, bad login count, temporary or permanent blacklist of usernames, if the user is known as a super administrator
  • Access to backend resources.
  • Session expiration
  • Explicit logout

A UI login should only ever result in a login to an external technology like LDAP, IMAP, remote web resources etc if the current context actually uses these resources.

Recently I introduced the horde/http_server component which allows a middleware-based approach to these topics.
We can neatly move the different authorization filters into stacks of middlewares doing one thing at a time or adding a conditional middleware. We can reuse predefined stacks for common scenarios. We can delegate the composition of a plethora of options to some factory and configuration and keep our actual drivers very lean and our bootstrap procedure as concise as possible.

In one of the upcoming articles, I will provide some example cases.

bookmark_borderAuthentication & Authorization is complex

Posted on by Ralf

Could there be any more straight forward topic than authentication & authorization? The user provides user name and password and clicks “login”, the backend checks if credentials are valid. Invalid credentials are not authorized, valid credentials are authorized and identified (authenticated). End of story. Right? Well… in many cases, it’s not that trivial.

As a user, I want to be informed if I have to change my password soon.

As a security officer, I want accounts blocked for some time after a certain amount of failed login attempts. I also want passwords to expire after a certain time. I also want login sessions to expire if client IP address or browser identity changes.

As an integrator, I want to enhance the system to digest certificates, Shibboleth, SAML or OpenID Connect, Bearer Tokens, JWTs or even Kerberos Tickets.

As a support person, I want to silently normalize user login names, lowercase them or append domain names to login names.

As a usability consultant, I want to leverage the user database for UI, make user names searchable and browseable.

As a site administrator, I want to be able to filter out certain or most users from the backend even if they provide valid credentials or block login for all but a few users, i.e. for site maintenance.

As an innovator I want to join user bases from two different authentication sources and possibly migrate them on next login seamlessly, without them noticing.

As a sales person, I want to allow a limited guest user experience prior to login rather than force everbody to the login screen.

As a returning user, I want to transparently log in through a remember me cookie, but maybe make the application aware of that limited trust, asking for real login for sensitive operations.

As a developer, I want to be flexible and allow any combination of criteria. Users may login with a global password or a purpose-limited token, I want them to use a second factor like TOTP if they have set up one but pass if they haven’t, unless I don’t allow it.

For business reasons, I want to rate limit API access per hour, per day and per month with individual thresholds each.

As an auditor, I want each request’s authorization process to be logged for evidence.

There is a lot more to consider, but I will stop here.

Authentication is any means of making sure of a requester’s identity. The most common practice in computers asking for a username (identity) and a password (proof). Another common practice is asking some external authority we trust, an Identity Provider. When we look at a person’s passport to compare his photo or fingerprint with his actual face or finger, this involves the same aspect: The name written on the passport for identity. The photo or fingerprint for proof. And, implicitly, we trust the party who created the passport (Identity Provider) and maybe have some means to check the integrity of the document. But if somebody has no passport but a driver’s license, a club membership card, we might instead use this for verification.

Transparent Authentication is a special case where we can identify the user without explicitly interacting with him. This can be achieved whenever the request carries credible identifying information like a pre-established cookie, a certificate, a passport token whose integrity can be validated or other methods.

Authorization is any decision making if a requester has access to a resource. Simply being authenticated might not be enough. Guests without authentication may be eligible for certain areas of your application, but maybe not if they are from a certain IP range or country. A person may be too young or too old to use a certain facility. A person may be old enough to buy alcohol but cannot currently present a sufficient document to proof this. On the other hand, the bearer of a ticket may be eligible to visit some concert, with no interest in his actual identity. A software user may need to both be authenticated and part of a certain privilege group “administrators” to access a configuration screen.

Both requirements can be linked to each other, as well as all those aspects mentioned above.

In another article I will look at how Horde does it and discuss if this approach is still right for modern use cases.

bookmark_borderHorde’s HTTP component goes PSR

Posted on by Ralf

This weekend, I gave the horde/http component a some major redesign. See how things escalated. Oh my.
My minimum goals were namespacing, PSR-4 (Revised Autoloading Standard) and some minor, schematic adjustments. The final result is quite different. I ended up implementing PSR-7 (HTTP Message Interface), PSR-17 (HTTP Factories) and PSR-18 (HTTP Client). The code largely complies with PSR-12 (Extended Coding Style Guide) and thus, implicitly, PSR-1 (Basic Coding Standard). I am sure you will find some deviations and issues, so I welcome any Pull Requests against my repo. You will find the new code in /src/. The original, incompatible implementation is untouched and resides in /lib/. They can coexist as they are so different (namespaced vs unnamespaced, among others).

This is not a total rewrite. I could leverage most of the existing code base with some tweaks. This work would not exist without the foundation by Chuck Hagenbuch and all the contributions from the different Horde maintainers over the years. You will also notice similarities to other php PSR-7/18 implementations out there. I checked out Guzzle, httplug/php-http and some others. It was a great learning experience and I will not pretend I am not influenced by it.

As with all my modernisation activities, I made use of features allowed by PHP 7.4. This excludes Constructor Property Promotion and, sadly, Union Types as both are PHP 8. Union Types have been relegated to phpdoc annotations or check methods. Please mind most of the PSR’s target compatibility with PHP releases older than PHP 7.4 and thus do not sport return types or scalar type hints. I followed these signatures where applicable.

One major change between the old codebase and the new one is clients and Request/Response classes.
In the old implementation, there would be one client but different Request/Response implementations using different backing technologies like pecl/http, fopen or curl. The new implementation moves transport code to clients implementing PSR-18. Optionally, they can be wrapped by a Horde\Http\HordeClientWrapper which exposes the PSR-18 itself, but otherwise mimics the old Horde_Http_Client class.

Horde/http is used by very different parts of Horde, including the horde/dav adapter to SabreDAV, various service integrations (Gravatar, Twitter, …), the horde/feed library and application code all over the place. I intend to upgrade those use cases to the new implementation. I am looking forward to criticism or acceptance of that approach.

The goal of this project is more far-reaching. While Horde 4 and Horde 5 already had horde/controller, they made very limited use of it. In my non-public projects, I relied heavily on controllers and I made several attempts at improving the way controllers are set up in horde/core. However, I always felt the results were clunky and not really what I wished to achieve. While horde/controller knows prefilters and postfilters, these are not easy to use and there are few examples. While doing research, I made up my mind. I want to replace Controller/Prefilter/Postfilter with their PSR-15 (HTTP Handlers and Middleware) equivalents. Controllers will be Handlers, Pre/Postfilters will be Middlewares. Together they will be stacks. Authentication, Authorization, Logging etc will be relegated to Middlewares. There will be a default stack to mimic the default controller behaviour in Horde 5 (Be authenticated or be relegated to the login page). You will be able to define application-specific default stacks or request-specific stacks. As Middlewares are a public standard, we might be able to leverage middlewares existing out in the wild or attract microframework users to some horde built middlewares. I want to make it easier for coders to build horde apps without relearning everything they needed to learn for laravel, laminas or symfony. I also want to make it easier for everyone to cooperate. Horde is among the oldest framework vendors, predating most of PEAR and Zend. I think we still have some bits to offer.

Missing Bits:

  • While I did some implementation of UploadedFileInterface, it is still quite basic
  • UploadedFileFactoryInterface is missing as I have not yet built the server side use cases
  • Unit Tests need to be adapted to the new code base. Is there some PSR Acid Test out there?
  • I began implementing the ext-http (PECL_HTTP) backend but stopped as I am unsure about it. That extension is in version 4 now and still services version 3, but we have backends for versions 1 and 2. I need to learn more about it and decice if it makes sense to invest into that aspect.

bookmark_borderMaintaina Horde: Fourth Of July Additions

Posted on by Ralf

I packaged some more exotic horde apps and libraries for use with the composer installer and the FRAMEWORK_6_0 codebase. This was mostly formal conversion work, no actual testing was done. Some of these items might not even be very useful to most administrators. Nevertheless, I want to close the gap between what is available in the horde git-tools install and what can be installed through the horde installer plugin for composer.

These apps are now available:

  • refactor (refactoring utility)
  • trean (bookmarks)
  • ulaform (Forms app)
  • sesha (H4ish inventory app)
  • skeleton (template application)
  • sam (Spam Assassin Integration app)
  • operator (phone call details reader)
  • pastie (simple H4ish pastebin app)

The libraries were previously not available for H6 and now have seen their alpha release:

  • horde/thrift
  • horde/service_urlshortener
  • horde/service_vimeo
  • horde/service_facebook
  • horde/service_twitter
  • horde/scribe
  • horde/reflection
  • horde/pgp
  • horde/rampage
  • horde/oauth
  • horde/kolab_resource
  • horde/pdf
  • horde/lens
  • horde/openxchange
  • horde/mongo
  • horde/memcache

I wish you all a joyful fourth of july.

There are still some items missing, including the Klutz cartoon reader app and some Kolab related libraries.

bookmark_borderNo more master branch in maintaina horde

Posted on by Ralf

I am changing the default branch in all maintaina-com/ horde repos to be the FRAMEWORK_6_0 branch. In a separate next step, the master branch on these repos will be removed.

This is not due to any semantic discussion of technical terms like “master”. I am simply acknowledging reality. At the moment I cannot hope to get all those changes merged into horde’s proper master branches. I do incorporate their advances into maintaina but it is not going to the tight feedback loop I would wish to have.

I have no use for a branch pretending to be something different than or beyond the FRAMEWORK_6_0 venture. I had README’s in all those master branches warning against using them. It is way better to simply get rid of them now.