Access user information

There are two ways to access the user information in a transaction method: using the self.transaction.user_info property, and using the self.transaction.get_user_info() method.

Use the user_info property

You can retrieve the information about the user who launched the transaction by accessing the self.transaction.user_info property:

from ansys.saf.glow.solution import UserInfo


@transaction(self=StepSpec())
def get_user_info(self) -> UserInfo:
    return self.transaction.user_info

This property is always available, but its content depends on the availability of the authorization token in the request header. If the token is not present, the property returns an empty UserInfo object. Otherwise, the user information is fetched from the identity provider. This implies that the token must be valid and the identity provider must be configured (GLOW_AUTH_ISSUER_URL and GLOW_AUTH_CLIENT_ID). An error is thrown if any of these two conditions are not met.

For more information about the available fields, see the API reference of ansys.saf.glow.solution.UserInfo.

Use the get_user_info() method

Alternatively, you can use the self.transaction.get_user_info() method to retrieve the user information:

from ansys.saf.glow.solution import UserInfo


@transaction(self=StepSpec())
def get_user_info(self) -> UserInfo:
    return self.transaction.get_user_info(fields=["preferred_username", "email"])

Similarly to the user_info property, if the authorization token is not present, this method returns an empty UserInfo object. Otherwise, the user information is fetched either directly from the token or through a request to the identity provider depending on the fields specified in the fields argument.

If no fields are specified or the specified fields are present in the token, the user information is fetched from the token. If any of the specified fields is not available in the token, a request is made to the identity provider. If the user information fetched from the identity provider contains the specified fields, it is returned, otherwise an error is thrown.

The fact that this method checks the token before sending a request to the identity provider means that it is generally more efficient than using the user_info property, and can work even if the identity provider is not configured (GLOW_AUTH_ISSUER_URL and GLOW_AUTH_CLIENT_ID), as long as the specified fields are present in the token.

Obtain the access token

If the authorization token itself is needed inside a transaction, it can be retrieved using the self.transaction.access_token property. This can be used to connect to downstream services.

@transaction(self=StepSpec())
def connect_to_downstream_service(self) -> None:
    connect_to_my_service(self.transaction.access_token)