cakephp 2.5.1: catching misspelled function calls

Question

I have an API wirtten and gave out instructions how to us it. For example to test the login you can call /api/login

Now I see in the logs, that someone keeps calling /API/LOGIN and gets an error 500.

Is there somehow a way, to catch such errors ONLY when calling /api/ controller functions? In that case, I would like to send back a response like Error. Wrong function call. I do not want to send this in general when a error 500 happens. Really only when /api/ related.

The error which gets reported belongs to the fact that I am calling in AppController::beforeFilter() a function like

$this->Api->check($username)

And I get this error when debug=2

Call to a member function check() on a non-object

When I call /api/login/ the functions works perfect.

I look forward for any tips! Thanks!

See in your code, have you included the `Api` class in AppController? — Arun Jain, Jun 26 '14 at 08:02

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 26 '14 at 11:15

The problem you are facing isn't the casing of the action (in PHP method names are case insensitive), but the casing of the controller. It won't find APIController and therefore throw an missing controller exception. Your AppController is then being invoked as it is being extended by CakeErrorController which is used on errors.

I can only assume that $this->Api refers to a model, and since the actual controller is CakeErrorController, that model of course isn't being loaded, hence the non-object error.

There are various ways to solve this problem, personally I'd probably hook in to the Dispatcher.beforeDispatch event and throw an exception or define an appropriate response if necessary, something like this:

// app/Config/bootstrap.php

App::uses('CakeEvent', 'Event');
App::uses('CakeEventManager', 'Event');

CakeEventManager::instance()->attach(
    function(CakeEvent $event) {
        $controller = $event->data['request']->params['controller'];
        $action = $event->data['request']->params['action'];

        if(strtolower($controller) === 'api') {
            $response = $event->data['response'];

            if($controller !== 'api') {
                $response->statusCode('403');
                $response->body('Invalid controller message');
                return $response;
            }

            if(strtolower($action) !== $action) {
                $response->statusCode('403');
                $response->body('Invalid action method');
                return $response;
            }
        }
    },
    'Dispatcher.beforeDispatch',
    array('priority' => 11)
);

This would enforce using lowercase for the controller and the action in case the api controller is being targeted.

However as already mentioned, method names are case insensitive, so forcing lowercase for actions isn't necessary from a technical point of view. Anyways, it's just an example...

cakephp 2.5.1: catching misspelled function calls

1 Answers1