Enhancement: Improve BillableMiddleware for SPAs | revive PR #167

[rvibit]

Note: This is not my original work, its a copy of #167 by @ggelashvili

Overview

This PR enhances the Billable middleware to provide better support for SPAs by allowing AJAX requests to receive a JSON response with a redirect URL. Currently, Billable middleware and the billing_enabled configuration have no use for SPAs, & causes confusion which this PR aims to rectify.

Changes

The updated Billable middleware now checks if the incoming request is an AJAX request and, if billing is enabled, returns a 402 status code alongside a JSON response containing a forceRedirectUrl field. This field provides a URL to which the SPA can redirect the user. The updated middleware assumes that the host parameter is included in the request, which can be easily implemented using an axios interceptor (if using axios on front-end).

By returning a JSON response and a 402 status code, the front-end can now hook into the response interceptor, catch 402 errors, extract the redirect URL from the response, and manage redirection on the front-end. This makes the Billable middleware more useful for SPAs.

I added my own middleware in a project I'm working on with React front-end & worked perfectly, so thought it might be useful to improve the original Billable middleware.

Note that the wiki would need to be updated if this gets approved/merged.

This should not be a breaking change since Billable middleware should not be used anyways for traditional SPAs.

[Kyon147]

Hi @rvibit thanks for the PR.

Can you just fix the merge conflict, it is because we changed up how we handle the template engine to make the keys more generic i.e. SPA rather than REACT and MPA rather than Blade

I'll re-review it and get it into the next release.

[rvibit]

Hi @rvibit thanks for the PR.

Can you just fix the merge conflict, it is because we changed up how we handle the template engine to make the keys more generic i.e. SPA rather than REACT and MPA rather than Blade

I'll re-review it and get it into the next release.

updated the PR, please check

[SDGPeteBatin]

@rvibit did you do the Laracasts tutorial too?

[rvibit]

@rvibit did you do the Laracasts tutorial too?

No I don't

[SDGPeteBatin]

@rvibit did you do the Laracasts tutorial too?

No I don't

Oh, I've just realised! @ggelashvili from #167 is the guy that published the course on Laracasts! That's why I recognised it :)

[Kyon147]

@rvibit have you checked if this is backwards compatible? Just trying to work out if we need to make this a major release if it breaks the existing SPA functionality. I assumed it would not, as we did not really have anything "workable" for SPA but wanted your input.

[rvibit]

@rvibit have you checked if this is backwards compatible? Just trying to work out if we need to make this a major release if it breaks the existing SPA functionality. I assumed it would not, as we did not really have anything "workable" for SPA but wanted your input.

It's backword compatible but there will be some confusion because
Currently we throw an error (fatal) in case of SPA that billable middleware doesn't work with SPA which developer can directly see on screen. after this is merged it'll start throwing 402 for ajax calls and the spa will fail with blank screen and developer has to open devtools to find out that the ajax request is failed.

Also I haven't tested it with MPA because I only have single app which is SPA, it'll work with MPA but if anyone from community watching this can confirm then that'll be good.

[Kyon147]

Thanks for the context @rvibit if you are now throwing a 402, we probably want to update the wiki to advise how to handle it.

[rvibit]

Thanks for the context @rvibit if you are now throwing a 402, we probably want to update the wiki to advise how to handle it.

I updated the wiki, I didn't know it'll get published without review, you can check it, or we can revert to last history if we need these updates after the merge