user_context

This chapter describes how to configure user context caching. See the User Context Feature chapter for an introduction to the subject.

Configuration

Caching Proxy Configuration

Varnish

Set up Varnish caching proxy as explained in the user context documentation.

Symfony reverse proxy

Set up Symfony reverse proxy as explained in the Symfony HttpCache documentation.

Context Hash Route

Then add the route you specified in the hash lookup request to the Symfony routing configuration, so that the user context event subscriber can get triggered:

# app/config/routing.yml
user_context_hash:
    path: /_fos_user_context_hash

Important

If you are using Symfony security for the hash generation, make sure that this route is inside the firewall for which you are doing the cache groups.

Note

This route is never actually used, as the context event subscriber will act before a controller would be called. But the user context is handled only after security happened. Security in turn only happens after the routing. If the routing does not find a route, the request is aborted with a ‘not found’ error and the listener is never triggered.

The event subscriber has priority 7 which makes it act right after the security listener which has priority 8. The reason to use a listener here rather than a controller is that many expensive operations happen later in the handling of the request. Having this listener avoids those.

enabled

type: enum default: auto options: true, false, auto

Set to true to explicitly enable the subscriber. The subscriber is automatically enabled if you configure any of the user_context options.

# app/config/config.yml
fos_http_cache:
    user_context:
        enabled: true

hash_header

type: string default: X-User-Context-Hash

The name of the HTTP header that the event subscriber will store the context hash in when responding to hash requests. Every other response will vary on this header.

match

accept

type: string default: application/vnd.fos.user-context-hash

HTTP Accept header that hash requests use to get the context hash. This must correspond to your caching proxy configuration.

method

type: string

HTTP method used by context hash requests, most probably either GET or HEAD. This must correspond to your caching proxy configuration.

matcher_service

type: string default: fos_http_cache.user_context.request_matcher

Id of a service that determines whether a request is a context hash request. The service must implement Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RequestMatcherInterface. If set, accept and method will be ignored.

hash_cache_ttl

type: integer default: 0

Time in seconds that context hash responses will be cached. Value 0 means caching is disabled. For performance reasons, it makes sense to cache the hash generation response; after all, each content request may trigger a hash request. However, when you decide to cache hash responses, you must invalidate them when the user context changes, particularly when the user logs in or out. This bundle provides a logout handler that takes care of this for you.

always_vary_on_context_hash

type: boolean default: true

This bundle automatically adds the Vary header for the user context hash, so you don’t need to do this yourself or configure it as header. If the hash header is missing from a request for some reason, the response is set to vary on the user identifier headers to avoid problems.

If not all your pages depend on the hash, you can set always_vary_on_context_hash to false and handle the Vary yourself. When doing that, you have to be careful to set the Vary header whenever needed, or you will end up with mixed up caches.

logout_handler

The logout handler will invalidate any cached user hashes when the user logs out. This will make sure that the session cookie of the logged out session can not be abused to see protected cached content.

For the handler to work:

  • your caching proxy must be configured for tag invalidation

  • Symfony’s default behavior of regenerating the session id when users log in and out must be enabled (invalidate_session).

Warning

The cache invalidation on logout only works correctly with FOSHttpCacheBundle 2.2 and later. It was broken in older versions of the bundle.

Tip

The logout handler is active on all firewalls. If your application has multiple firewalls with different user context, you need to create your own custom invalidation handler. Be aware that Symfony’s LogoutSuccessHandler places the SessionLogoutHandler that invalidates the old session before any configured logout handlers.

enabled

type: enum default: auto options: true, false, auto

Defaults to auto, which enables the logout handler service if a proxy client is configured. Set to true to explicitly enable the logout handler. This will throw an exception if no proxy client is configured.

user_identifier_headers

type: array default: ['Cookie', 'Authorization']

Determines which HTTP request headers the context hash responses will vary on.

If the hash only depends on the Authorization header and should be cached for 15 minutes, configure:

# app/config/config.yml
fos_http_cache:
    user_context:
        user_identifier_headers:
            - Authorization
        hash_cache_ttl: 900

The Cookie header is automatically added to this list unless session_name_prefix is set to false.

session_name_prefix

type: string default: PHPSESSID

Defines which cookie is the session cookie. Normal cookies will be ignored in user context and only the session cookie is taken into account. It is recommended that you clean up the cookie header to avoid any other cookies in your requests.

If you set this configuration to false, cookies are completely ignored. If you add the Cookie header to user_identifier_headers, any cookie will make the request not anonymous.

role_provider

type: boolean default: false

One of the most common scenarios is to differentiate the content based on the roles of the user. Set role_provider to true to determine the hash from the user’s roles. If there is a security context that can provide the roles, all roles are added to the hash:

# app/config/config.yml
fos_http_cache
    user_context:
        role_provider: true

Custom Context Providers

Custom providers need to:

  • implement the FOS\HttpCache\UserContext\ContextProvider interface

  • be tagged with fos_http_cache.user_context_provider.

New in version 2.4.0: Since version 2.4.0, context providers are autoconfigured. With autoconfigure enabled in Symfony 3.3 and newer, your custom providers are tagged automatically, with a default priority of 0. For older versions, or if autoconfigure is disabled, or to override the priority, check out the rest of this section.

If you need context providers to run in a specific order, you can specify the optional priority parameter for the tag. The higher the priority, the earlier a context provider is executed. The build-in provider has a priority of 0.

The updateUserContext(UserContext $context) method of the context provider is called when the hash is generated.

acme.demo_bundle.my_service:
    class: "%acme.demo_bundle.my_service.class%"
    tags:
        - { name: fos_http_cache.user_context_provider, priority: 10 }
<service id="acme.demo_bundle.my_service" class="%acme.demo_bundle.my_service.class%">
    <tag name="fos_http_cache.user_context_provider" priority="10" />
</service>
$container
    ->register('acme.demo_bundle.my_service', '%acme.demo_bundle.my_service.class%')
    ->addTag('fos_http_cache.user_context_provider', array('priority' => 10))
;