Add posibility to attach passport context to upgrade request

[Morishiri]

Story

As a server I want to be able to authenticate users and attach user context to request.

I want to be able to parse the incoming websocket request the same way as regular HTTP request and allow e.g. passport to attach user to request object so it can be later used in graphql Subscription context.

Acceptance criteria

• Server is able to obtain user from the incoming request via passport middleware

Additional context

In my case passport uses oidc strategy and cookies, I cannot simply attach the Bearer token to connectionParams as mentioned in the docs.

I modified the proposed useServer call to this form:

useServer(
    {
      schema,
      context: async (ctx) => {
        // I want to be able to get request.user here!
      },
      onConnect: async (ctx) =>
        new Promise((resolve) => {
          // Is stored passport.initialize() from above
          passportInitialize(ctx.extra.request, {}, () => {
            // Is stored passport.session() from above
            passportSession(ctx.extra.request, {}, () => {
              // request here has `_passport` property, but user is not there, why?
              resolve(true);
            });
          });
        }),
    },
    wsServer,
  );

but it doesn't seem to work as expected. Inspiration: https://stackoverflow.com/a/53199673/5069352

Is this something already possible or not supported at the moment?

[enisdenjo]

When using useServer, the context holds the WebSocket and the initial request in the extra prop.

Sadly, I've never used Passport before, so I cannot tell you what exactly the issue is - but since you're using Cookies, I guess Passport has to be a middleware that is run before ever establishing a WebSocket connection.

[enisdenjo]

onConnect is called after the WS connection has been established, read its documentation for more info.

Can you share your complete server implementation?

[Morishiri]

I will try to extract what I cannot share and create some reproductible repository.

[enisdenjo]

A repro would be perfect! Thanks.

[Morishiri]

Turns out I managed to fix it. I had much more middleware from the baseAppFactory we use.

The code I posted in my original question works, the issue in my case was that I had expressSession call as well so I needed to modify the code to the following:

const sessionInstance = expressSession({
  // options
});
app.use(sessionInstance);

const passportInitialize = passport.initialize();
const passportSession = passport.session();

app.use(passportInitialize);
app.use(passportSession);


const serverCleanup = useServer(
  {
    schema,
    context: async (ctx) => {
       return {
         user: ctx.extra.request.user
       };
    },
    onConnect: async (ctx) =>
      new Promise((resolve) => {
        // Is stored sessionMiddleware() from above
        sessionInstance(ctx.extra.request, {}, () => {
          // Is stored passport.initialize() from above
          passportInitialize(ctx.extra.request, {}, () => {
            // Is stored passport.session() from above
            passportSession(ctx.extra.request, {}, () => {
              resolve(true); // always allow connecting (or check if user is in request already and deny if not, depends what you want to achieve)
            });
          });
        });
      }),
    },
    wsServer,
  );

And it was actually mentioned in this stackoverflow answer I posted. May be worth documenting it for the next people having similar issues.

Thanks for your interest and time! :)

[enisdenjo]

Glad you got it working! I won't ​add this to the documentation, it is too specific to express and passport - not to graphql-ws.

Anyone facing similar issues will either find this Discussion or the answer in StackOverflow.