1545159 - Expose captive portal status

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(WebExtensions :: General, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

We need to possibly handle proxy in some unique fashion when the browser is behind a captive portal. TBD

Probably the best place to expose this is on browserSettings[1], but possibly on proxy.settings.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/browserSettings

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug is a task, but please change it back in case of error.

Comment 2

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Attachment: Bug 1545159 implement captivePortal api

Comment 3

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

:mconca fyi on new api for secure proxy support. I think this is generically useful for other proxy extensions, probably others, in order to know the captive portal state. I have not required mozillaAddons for this. The API provides current state and event listeners to watch for state changes.

Comment 4

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

:mixedpuppy I agree that there are use cases. Any privacy concerns? Does knowing if a user is going through a captive portal indicate they are away (cafe, hotel, etc.) versus on a dedicated home/work network? Does that matter?

Comment 5

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

:mconca, Apparently you can detect captive portals without this, they already have code for it (this was low priority, but super easy to do). Given that, I don't think we're exposing anything new. So, the point of exposing this is to reduce that duplication in the extension and ensure the behavior is consistent with what Firefox does internally.

Comment 6

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

(In reply to Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy) from comment #5)

:mconca, Apparently you can detect captive portals without this, they already have code for it (this was low priority, but super easy to do). Given that, I don't think we're exposing anything new. So, the point of exposing this is to reduce that duplication in the extension and ensure the behavior is consistent with what Firefox does internally.

+1 for making this public

Comment 7

[Dragana Damjanovic [:dragana]]

(In reply to Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy) from comment #5)

:mconca, Apparently you can detect captive portals without this, they already have code for it (this was low priority, but super easy to do). Given that, I don't think we're exposing anything new. So, the point of exposing this is to reduce that duplication in the extension and ensure the behavior is consistent with what Firefox does internally.

You are right, we do not expose anything new. Our captive portal detection only detects that a captive portal redirects request to a log-in page or an agree-on-term-of-servces page. An extension can detect the same redirect if it sends a request early-enough, before the user enters password, accept the term of service, etc.

Comment 8

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=9b3c87291d9d3898d8fffb3b79e283fe9df24da6

Comment 9

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=0ab507f146c6885931e85b9d868ca84ffe3cd958

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/57598d1d033f
implement captivePortal api r=rpl,valentin

Comment 11

[Oana Pop-Rus]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/57598d1d033f

Comment 13

[Madalin Cotetiu]

Can you please provide some STR for this issue so we can check it manually? If no manual testing is needed please mark it as "qe-verify- "

Comment 14

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Looks like this wasn't documented yet, can we make that happen?

Comment 15

[Austin Hounsel [:ahounsel]]

I would also be interested in seeing this documented on MDN. We want to detect captive portals for some DNS-over-HTTPS related work.

Comment 16

[Richard Bloor]

Could I get some details on what needs to be documented?

Comment 17

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

Documentation I believe is at least in part generated based on the schema, then further crafted.

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/extensions/schemas/captive_portal.json

The test can sometimes also help in generating any example.

https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/components/extensions/test/xpcshell/test_ext_captivePortal.js

Comment 18

[Richard Bloor]

Review and feedback of draft of the MDN content sought. Thanks!

Comment 19

[Richard Bloor]

In addition to feedback on the API page content, opinions on the need for a web extension example are also sought.

Comment 20

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

That all seems reasonable. I don't think we need a full example.

Comment 21

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen] [:📆][:🧩]]

Looks good to me as well!