SAPUI5 restrict page visibility

Question

Is there any way/best practice to hide unavailable pages from users in SAPUI5?

Let's see an example. I have a complex application with a user login page. Here customers can login to the application, and their role data is retrieved from a backend system. Based on these roles, some users are not permitted to create a new object. Only logged in users should be able to see application pages. I'm using routing, so functionalities like edit can be accessed by direct links as well.

Currently I'm using the onRouteMatched event handler in the Component.js, which checks for the current user session storage. If the user session is not found, it redirects the request to the login page.

The problem is that it shows the requested page for one or two seconds before navigating to the login page. It's really ugly.

Where should I implement such kind of functionality? Is there any hook method for this use case?

I think I need a hook method which is called before displaying the view matched by the given route and re-direct the call to the login page. Unfortunately I couldn't find any helpful document in this topic.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The approach I've used for this is documented here Display a Target

To summarize, you can assign your view to a target in manifest.json, but not a route/pattern. This makes it inaccessible via direct links.

In your application, you can "display" the view instead of routing to it. The behavior is the same, except you do lose the history. So pressing the browser back button will behave differently, since you didn't actually route to a new view.

this.getOwnerComponent().getRouter().getTargets().display("edit", {
    fromTarget : "home"
});

If you still want the views to be accessible via direct link, you can use custom URL parameters in a view where all users are allowed to go.

For example, you can use the route

yourAppUrl.com/home?navTo=edit

And in your controller, use jQuery to parse the parameters.

_onPatternMatched: function() {
    var navParam = jQuery.sap.getUriParameters().get("navTo");
    if (navParam === "edit") {
        //handle your user verification here, then display the target
        this.getOwnerComponent().getRouter().getTargets().display("edit", {
            fromTarget : "home"
        });
    }
}