Add "followRedirects" and "agent" options to request

[Meshz]

Hello, I'm currently doing a NTLM authentication through RNFB in order to receive a fedAuth cookie. I've been able to crypt/decrypt all the required information through crypto-js but now I'm stuck with the options to give to RFNB.fetch() method (for OkHttp3).

Due to the process of NTLM authentication (createType1Message, parseType2Message, createType3Message), I would like to be able to dynamically set followRedirects to false to OkHttp3. I see the following line in RNFetchBlobReq.java:365 where "true" is hardcoded:

clientBuilder.followRedirects(true);

I also would like to be able to set an agent keepalive for connection in order to keep the socket open. In the other script I used I had some lines like:

var http = require("http");
var keepaliveAgent = new http.Agent({ keepAlive: true });
httpreq.get(url, {
    agent: keepaliveAgent,
}, callback);

For now, I think RNFB.fetch() takes METHOD / URL / HEADERS / BODY. Is there any chance you could add these two extra-parameters? Or any suggestions on how to implement this in an other way?

Tell me if I'm not clear enough or if you need additional explanations. Thank you for your time and response.

[Meshz]

After some research, it appears that OkHttp uses a ConnectionPool that automatically reuses HTTP/1.x connections (explained here on point 2). So the agent keepalive is not needed.

I tried to manually set clientBuilder.followRedirects(false); in RNFetchBlobReq.java:365 and it's now working. Is there any possibility to set dynamically set followRedirects in RNFB.fetch() ?

[wkh237]

@Meshz , thanks so much for the investigation and assistance ! 👍 sorry for late response, I have very limited time on this project in recently. IMO we can add another option followRedirect:boolean to RNFetchBlob.config for disabling follow redirect. How do you think ?

[Meshz]

@wkh237 Add an option to RNFetchBlob.config seems like the perfect implementation to me. Maybe just name it as OkHttp names it: followRedirects. Any idea of when you can have some time for this? I can try to add it for Android if you want but I'm not familiar with PR and I didn't checked for iOS. 😔

[Meshz]

@wkh237 As I was thinking, add the followRedirects option does solve the issue #156 as it's not following the redirects which overwrite the Set-Cookie from initial GET (check issue for full explanation). BTW, all the tests I ran and the modifications I made were only for Android. I'll switch soon to the iOS version and let you know the results.

[wkh237]

@Meshz , I have added followRedirect to config, please verify if that works with 0.10.2-beta.6, thanks.

[Meshz]

@wkh237 Thank you for that implementation, I can confirm that this is working on Android. 👍