[Tip] Automating disconnecting idle clients

by David Workman
Data Mosaic

For security reasons and license use efficiency, disconnecting idle clients is a good thing. Unfortunately, Servoy doesn't have a function to accomplish this programmatically. The only way to disconnect clients at the moment is manually via the Servoy admin application:

This is also the only place where Servoy gives you a hint as to what the current idle time of a client is (this data is not stored in the repository).

The solution to automate this is to process the Servoy admin client pages with curl every so many minutes, check for any clients who are over the idle time limit you specify, and then disconnect them with an additional curl call.

Put the following code in a batch processor and you're good to go! Works with Servoy 2.2x through 3.5.2. It's a bit of a hack and I was lazy with the code (should have used regex for everything but it gave me a headache) -- but it works like a champ.

(Note for windows users: make sure curl is installed for starters. Off the top of my head I think that the executeProgram(...) call has to be formatted a bit differently as well. There are several forum posts on how to use this function with windows you can look up.)

/*****
    auto shutdown clients who are idle
*****/

//setup
var minutesAllowed = 120

//get page
var user = "admin"
var password = "password"
var address = "localhost:8080"

var x = application.executeProgram(
        'curl',
        '-u',
        user + ":" + password,
        address + '/servoy-admin/clients');
        
//process all clients
while (x.search(/clients\/info/) != -1) {
    
    //get user ID
    var userIDStart = x.search(/clients\/info/)
    
    var userID = x.substring(userIDStart + 13, userIDStart + 49)
    
    //get login time
    var loginStart = x.search(/User logged in\:<td>/)
    var loginEnd = x.search(/<tr><td>Solution opened:/)
    
    var login = new Date(x.substring(loginStart + 19, loginEnd))
    
    //get idle time
    var idleStart = x.search(/<td>User idle since/)
    var idleEnd = x.search(/< /table>\n< /table>\n< /td>/)
    
    var idle = new Date(x.substring(idleStart + 24, idleStart + 24 + 28))
    
    //logic for closing and idle client
    if (new Date() - idle > (1000 * 60 * minutesAllowed)) {
    
        //get additional info from repository server, table servoy_client_stats
        var dataset = databaseManager.getDataSetByQuery(
                        "repository_server",
                        "select server_name, server_ip from servoy_client_stats where client_id = ?",
                        [userID],
                        1)
        
        var infoHTML = application.executeProgram(
            'curl',
            '-u',
            user + ":" + password,
            address + '/servoy-admin/clients/info/' + userID)
            
        var infoStart = infoHTML.search(/User ID:/)
        var infoEnd =     infoHTML.search(/<\!-- User ID end/)
        var infoExtra = infoHTML.substring(infoStart + 15, infoEnd - 5)

    
        //(*optional*) log action in a log table
        controller.newRecord()
        
        //data from servoy-admin clients list page
        client_id = userID
        start_time = login
        idle_time = idle
        
        //data from repository server
        server_name = dataset.getValue(1,1)
        server_ip = dataset.getValue(1,2)
        
        //data from servoy-admin client information detail page
        extra_info = infoExtra
        
        controller.saveData()        
    
        //shutdown client
        application.executeProgram(
            'curl',
            '-u',
            user + ":" + password,
            address + '/servoy-admin/clients/shutdown/client/' + userID + "?confirm=Shutdown%21")        
    }
    
    //remove client from processing string
    x = x.substring(idleStart + 24 + 28, 50000)
}