CSRF stands for “Cross Site Request Forgery” and if you’re using forms on your site, you’ll probably want to protect yourself and users against this kind of attack.
You just finished your latest PHP project using the CodeIgniter framework and decide to enable the CSRF protection option in your `config.php` file.
$config['csrf_protection'] = TRUE; // <- set to TRUE $config['csrf_token_name'] = 'csrf_token'; // <- name this whatever $config['csrf_cookie_name'] = 'csrf_cookie'; // <- name this whatever $config['csrf_expire'] = 7200; // <- default is two hours
Enabling it within `config.php` is not enough. You also need to use the form helper `form_open()` function to construct the form's HTML markup. This function constructs the form so that it contains a `<input type="hidden">` element containing the CSRF token value. If the submitted form data is missing this token, it will not submit.
Now CSRF is working but you discover that your jQuery ajax requests are all suddenly failing with a type 500 server error. This is a direct result of activating the CSRF Protection option in CodeIgniter. As just explained, the submitted form data must contain the CSRF token, but it's missing from your ajax requests.
The solution is simple. You need to make sure that your ajax requests simulate a regular form submission by including the CSRF token value within the submitted data.
There are two types of solutions:
Solution #1:
This only works if your ajax requests occur when a form is already constructed on the page, such as when doing remote validation to check to see if a password or username already exists.
You'll need to copy the value from the hidden field called `csrf_token` (the name is exactly as per your `$config['csrf_token_name']` option setting) and send this along with your ajax request.
var csrf = $('input[name="csrf_token"]').val(); // <- get token value from hidden form input
$.ajax({
// your other ajax options,
data: { // submit token value with YOUR token name
csrf_token: csrf
}
});
Solution #2:
This works for all ajax requests, even when you do not have a form on the page, such as remotely loading some content.
In this case, you can't get the CSRF token from a hidden field, since there is no form. You must retrieve it from the CSRF cookie. I'm using a jQuery cookie plugin.
var csrf = $.cookie('csrf_cookie'); // <- get token value from cookie
$.ajax({
// your other ajax options,
data: { // submit token value with YOUR token name
csrf_token: csrf
}
});
Notice how the ajax in both solutions is sending the token with the same name, that's your name as per your configuration, `csrf_token`. Only the source of the token value is different... Solution #1 gets the token value from the hidden field, where Solution #2 gets the same token value from the cookie.
You can only use Solution #1 when you have a form on the page constructed with the `form_open()` function. However, you can use Solution #2 with or without a form, in all cases.
NOTES:
I have CodeIgniter v2.1.4 and by default, the `$config['csrf_token_name']` option is set to `csrf_test_name`. This mismatch might get a little confusing, but you can use whatever naming convention you wish. In my solution above, I changed it to `csrf_token`.
- To retrieve the current token from the hidden input, use the name assigned to the `$config['csrf_token_name']` option.
- To retrieve the current token from the cookie, use the name assigned to the `$config['csrf_cookie_name']` option.
No matter how you retrieve the token value, the important thing to remember is to always send the token value along with whatever name you've assigned to the `$config['csrf_token_name']` option.