Standardised JSON VP list format

[Arran Cudbard-Bell]

On 11 Nov 2011, at 00:13, Brian Candler wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 09:59:02PM +0100, Arran Cudbard-Bell wrote:
>> Why do you want to include reply items in the request body?
> 
> I can give you a concrete usage case for this.
> 
> You've built up a partial reply so far, by looking up attributes for a user
> in some database.  Now you want to supplement that with a policy decision,
> implemented by rlm_rest.
> 
> The policy says: if this user has a static IP address, then tunnel them to a
> farm of static LNSes (unless the request was from one of those LNSes).

Hmm fair enough. Well i've been discussing some changes with Alan that 
would allow VALUE_PAIR to carry a 'source/target' list.

I.e. you can create a temporary list of VPs, and then pass that to pairmove
with a request, which'll sort them into the correct list.

But you could also write the source list in there, and then include that as 
either an encapsulating JSON object "request":{} or just as part of the 
attribute name "request:<attr>".

Then attrfilter needs to be modified to take calls from other modules, and the attributes
you want to include from other lists go in there.

	reply:<name> *= ANY
	User-Name *= ANY
	Tmp-String-0 := "My extra special web API attribute that you only see here"

> 
>> Why do you want to include control items in the request body?
> 
> That one I don't have a case for, but the control list is sometimes a
> convenient dumping ground for temporary variables. These could go in the
> request list instead.

They can also go in header data which is what I was hinting at before.

For rlm_rest this would be something like:

uri = "http://example.org/user/%{User-Name}?auth-type=%{control:Auth-Type}"

> 
> But I also think there is value in making the input and output JSON formats
> identical.  If the reply can set attributes in control and reply lists, then
> I think it's reasonable that the request should be able to carry those lists
> too.


Yes.

-Arran

Arran Cudbard-Bell
a.cudbardb at networkradius.com

Technical consultant and solutions architect

15 Ave. du Granier, Meylan, France
+33 4 69 66 54 50