[4.x]: Logged in user info not available in plugin init()

[wbrowar]

What happened?

Description

In Craft 3 I am able to get a user’s getIdentity info, or check if the user is an admin, from within my plugin’s init() method. In Craft 4 I am seeing null when I check for Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity() and I get false when checking for Craft::$app->getUser()->getIsAdmin().

This is happening to me and at least one other developer, however, other folks in Discord tried this out and get the expected behavior. 🤷‍♂️

Steps to reproduce

1. Log into Craft as an admin or an active user.
2. Add the following to your plugin class: use craft\elements\User;
3. In your init() function, below parent::init();, add Craft::dd(Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity());3.
4. Reload a page (when the plugin is installed and enabled), and you may or may not see null

Expected behavior

When checking for Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity() you should get the logged in User and access to their user properties.

Actual behavior

For my plugins, I'm getting null as a result of checking Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity().

Craft CMS version

4.0.0-RC1 (also beta.4)

PHP version

8.0.13

Operating system and version

Linux 5.10.104-linuxkit

Database type and version

MySQL 8.0.28

Image driver and version

Imagick @PACKAGE_VERSION@ (ImageMagick 7.0.11-14)

Installed plugins and versions

• Guide | 3.2.0-beta.1 (unreleased)
• Little Layout 1.1.0 (unreleased)
• Redactor 3.0.0-beta.3
• SEOmatic 4.0.0-beta.8

[brandonkelly]

Meanwhile @mmikkel is seeing 4.0 fully solving #2473 for him.

Thinking both of these are just a bit of a crapshoot right now (and in 3.x).

Would it be possible to move your logic to after the app is fully initialized?

use craft\web\Application;

Craft::$app->on(Application::EVENT_INIT, function() {
    // ...
});

[mmikkel]

@brandonkelly For Craft 4, would it be possible (and a good idea) to make Craft throw an exception if a plugin or custom module tries to query the current user via Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity() too early in the request lifecycle (i.e. before the Application::EVENT_INIT event has fired)?

Admittedly, after ~5 years I still don't completely understand the actual/underlying problem 😅 But assuming I was wrong before and getIdentity() still has the potential to cause weird behaviours like this in 4.0, it'd be great if there was some way to avoid this gotcha altogether.

(Personally I'm careful to always defer any session-dependent logic to Application::EVENT_INIT (or Plugins::EVENT_AFTER_PLUGINS_LOADED) event handlers – in my experience the problem is mainly with people adding Craft::$app->getUser()->getIdentity() to their project module's init methods, which has the potential to break stuff without it being clear at all what's actually going on :/)

[wbrowar]

Would it be possible to move your logic to after the app is fully initialized?

This is similar to how I solved it on my end. I had 3 different events that needed the currently logged in user info and I went on to get that info at those points, instead of trying to save them to a static variable. It was more for convenience, so this wasn't a big blocker for me.

For my purpose, this is all set, but I wanted to put the bug out there in case it breaks other plugins.

[brandonkelly]

But assuming I was wrong before and getIdentity() still has the potential to cause weird behaviours like this in 4.0, it'd be great if there was some way to avoid this gotcha altogether.

I don’t think Craft should outright prevent it from working, but as of the next Craft 4 release it will start logging a warning if any element queries are executed before the app is fully initialized. Also doing the same if Twig is instantiated, as we’ve seen similar reliability issues with that, if a not-yet-initialized plugin was planning to register a Twig extension.

[brandonkelly]

4.0.0-RC2 is out now with those warnings.

[khalwat]

I don’t think Craft should outright prevent it from working, but as of the next Craft 4 release it will start logging a warning if any element queries are executed before the app is fully initialized. Also doing the same if Twig is instantiated, as we’ve seen similar reliability issues with that, if a not-yet-initialized plugin was planning to register a Twig extension.

I still think Craft could use a more formalized loading process for plugins to help alleviate all of this.