Allow anonymous read access to already-public content (CONTENTBOX-1516)

[lmajano]

Description

Currently the ContentBox API (/cbapi/v1) is entirely locked down — every endpoint requires a JWT, including read-only listing/viewing of content that is already publicly visible on the front-end website. This makes index/show on entries, pages, and contentStore needlessly require authentication for data anyone can already see by just visiting the site.

This PR makes those three "read" actions publicly reachable, matching content parity with the public front-end, while leaving everything else (write actions, sites, menus, categories, comments, authors, etc.) exactly as authenticated as before.

How it works

• The real gate for anonymous traffic is the contentbox-api-v1 module's firewall rule (secureList covers every event, whitelist previously only excluded auth/echo). The whitelist regex is widened to also match entries.index, entries.show, pages.index, pages.show, contentStore.index, contentStore.show.
• The per-action secured="..." annotations on those same six actions are removed — cbSecurity checks annotations in a second, independent pass after the rule pass, so both had to change for anonymous access to actually work.
• index() was already safe for anonymous use: it exclusively goes through ContentService.findPublishedContent(), which filters to isPublished / publishedDate <= now / expireDate null-or-future — the same rule the public site uses.
• show() was not safe as-is: it resolves by raw id/slug with no visibility filtering (it's built for editors previewing drafts). baseContentHandler.show() now additionally rejects (404, same EntityNotFound shape as an unknown id) any anonymous request for content that isn't published, is expired, or is password protected — so drafts can't be enumerated by id.
• Write verbs (create/update/delete) map to different event names and keep their existing secured="..." annotations, so they remain fully gated. sites and menus keep their class-level secured="SITES_ADMIN" / "MENUS_ADMIN" and are untouched.

Jira Issues

https://ortussolutions.atlassian.net/browse/CONTENTBOX-1516

Type of change

• Bug Fix
• Improvement
• New Feature
• Breaking change (fix or feature that would cause existing functionality to not work as expected)
• This change requires a documentation update

Checklist

• My code follows the style guidelines of this project cfformat
• I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas
• I have made corresponding changes to the documentation
• I have added tests that prove my fix is effective or that my feature works
• New and existing unit tests pass locally with my changes

Test plan

• Added tests/specs/contentbox-api/PublicContentAccessSpec.cfc: anonymous index/show on entries/pages/contentStore succeed and only return published data; a freshly created draft item's show 404s anonymously; anonymous writes on those resources are still rejected (401); sites/menus stay fully locked anonymously.
• Ran the full tests.specs.contentbox-api bundle (125 specs) locally before and after this change: 122 pass / 3 fail in both runs, and the 3 failures are an identical, pre-existing CONTENTVERSIONS ORM error in the create stories, unrelated to this change (confirmed by stashing this diff and re-running).
• Manual curl spot checks against a running instance: anonymous GET /cbapi/v1/sites/default/entries and .../entries/:slug → 200; anonymous POST /cbapi/v1/sites/default/entries → 401; anonymous GET /cbapi/v1/sites and .../menus → 401.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

CI on the first push (d986c66e0) showed failures across boxlang-cfml and Adobe CF jobs, all in the create stories of EntriesSpec/PagesSpec/ContentStoreSpec — none in anything this PR touches (index/show on those handlers, or the firewall/annotation changes). Investigated each:

• All failures shared one root cause: BaseContent.cfc's addNewContentVersion() failing to find a CONTENTVERSIONS key on freshly-.new()'d entities (a KeyNotFoundException on BoxLang engines, the equivalent UndefinedElementException on Adobe CF 2023) — a relationship-collection-not-initialized bug, unrelated to auth/security. Confirmed pre-existing by stashing this PR's diff locally and reproducing the identical failure on unmodified development.
• The Adobe CF 2023 job additionally hit a already-known, already-fixed issue: RestHandler.onEntityNotFoundException()'s MissingArgumentException on that engine (COLDBOX-1453), fixed by PR Fix entity not found handler for Adobe ColdFusion 2023 #695 which merged into development while this PR was in flight — my branch's base predated it.
• The boxlang-cfml jobs showing green on one workflow run and red on a duplicate run of the same commit confirmed the underlying issue is non-deterministic (an initialization-order race), not something this diff introduces.

Action taken: merged origin/development into this branch (82ff6a739), which pulls in both the COLDBOX-1453 workaround and a same-day fix (5b4cc4e3c, "fix: bug on non initialized content") that initializes contentVersions and the other relationship collections in BaseContent.init() — resolving the root cause directly. Re-ran the full tests.specs.contentbox-api bundle locally against the merged branch: 125/125 passing, no regressions.

No code changes of my own were needed beyond the merge — waiting on CI to confirm green on 82ff6a739.

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Generated by Claude Code

[Copilot]

Copilot review overview

🟡 Changes recommended

Critical access-control issues remain for inactive sites and authenticated users lacking content permissions.

Get a fresh assessment by requesting another Copilot review.

Review effort: Lite
Findings: 2

Open (2)

• Anonymous content access bypasses inactive-site restrictions · New
• Authenticated users can access private content without permissions · New

What changed in this PR

This pull request enables anonymous reads of published entries, pages, and content store items while preserving authenticated writes and administrative access.

Changes:

• Expands the API whitelist for public read actions.
• Filters anonymous content access by publication visibility.
• Adds access-control tests and development module paths.

File	Summary
tests/​specs/​contentbox-api/​PublicContentAccessSpec.cfc	Tests anonymous reads and protected operations.
modules/​contentbox/​modules/​contentbox-api/​modules/​contentbox-api-v1/​ModuleConfig.cfc	Expands the API firewall whitelist.
modules/​contentbox/​modules/​contentbox-api/​modules/​contentbox-api-v1/​handlers/​pages.cfc	Makes page reads publicly accessible.
modules/​contentbox/​modules/​contentbox-api/​modules/​contentbox-api-v1/​handlers/​entries.cfc	Makes entry reads publicly accessible.
modules/​contentbox/​modules/​contentbox-api/​modules/​contentbox-api-v1/​handlers/​contentStore.cfc	Makes content store reads publicly accessible.
modules/​contentbox/​modules/​contentbox-api/​modules/​contentbox-api-v1/​handlers/​baseContentHandler.cfc	Adds anonymous visibility checks for content access.
box.json	Adds development module installation paths.

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[lmajano]

CI red on commit 69bba414 was real, not a flake: 9 failures, all on the Adobe ColdFusion jobs (adobe@2023, adobe@2025), all tracing to PublicContentAccessSpec.cfc via baseContentHandler.cfc:40 — No site found for ID/Slug default.

Root cause: Site.cfc's isActive property declares default="true", but on Adobe CF (unlike Lucee/BoxLang) that default attribute isn't applied to a freshly new()'d ORM entity until explicitly set. The installer creates the default test-fixture site without an explicit isActive key, so on Adobe CF it comes back falsy — and my new preHandler() active-site check (correctly) 404s it for anonymous callers. Author.cfc already works around this exact same engine quirk (variables.isActive = true; in init()); Site.cfc was missing that safeguard.

Fixed in 324684533 by adding the same explicit default to Site.cfc's init(). Verified locally: 126/126 contentbox-api specs + 114/118 contentbox-web specs (4 pre-existing skips) pass on BoxLang, including SitesSpec's explicit inactive-site test.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

Found the actual root cause of the "No site found for ID/Slug default" flakiness — my previous fix (324684533) was necessary but not sufficient.

SitesSpec.cfc's "I want to edit a site" test does PUT /cbapi/v1/sites/default with isActive: false directly against the real default site (the shared fixture nearly every other API spec depends on), wrapped in withRollback(). withRollback() isn't reliable for undoing an UPDATE on every engine — on Adobe CF it was leaving the default site permanently marked inactive for the rest of that test run. Nothing downstream ever read isActive before, so this pre-existing test-isolation bug was invisible until my new preHandler() check started (correctly) enforcing it — explaining both the earlier consistent failure and the later run-to-run flakiness (whichever spec ran after SitesSpec in a given execution paid the price).

Fixed in 328f6182d: that test now edits a disposable throwaway site instead of the real "default" one, matching the pattern the adjacent delete-site test already uses.

Verified locally on BoxLang: SitesSpec → PublicContentAccessSpec back-to-back (126/126 full contentbox-api suite, 114/118 contentbox-web with 4 pre-existing skips) all pass.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

Down to a single failure on 328f6182d (progress from 9 → 1): SitesSpec.cfc's new disposable-site edit test now fails only in its finally cleanup — siteService.delete(testSite) throws "An exception occurred when committing the transaction" on Adobe CF.

Cause: testSite was captured before the PUT, which runs as a separate simulated request with its own ORM session — so by the time finally runs, testSite is a stale entity. Calling siteService.delete() directly on a stale entity hits the exact Hibernate cascade quirk SiteService.delete() already comments on for Adobe. The sibling "delete a site" test in the same file avoids this by deleting through the HTTP API instead of the ORM service directly.

Fixed in e5676bc80 the same way: cleanup now goes through this.delete("/cbapi/v1/sites/..."). Verified locally: 126/126 contentbox-api specs pass, including SitesSpec → PublicContentAccessSpec back-to-back.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

Root-caused the failure on e5676bc80 (100% reproducible on all Adobe CF jobs, 0% on Lucee/BoxLang — confirmed across two duplicate Adobe runs each): PublicContentAccessSpec's anonymous "show" test for disk-queues-77caf got a 404 instead of 200, meaning the fixture entry was no longer publicly visible.

EntriesSpec runs before PublicContentAccessSpec in bundle order, and its "edit an entry" test PUTs new content directly onto the real disk-queues-77caf fixture under withRollback() — the exact same pattern already found unreliable for undoing an UPDATE on Adobe CF (the Site.cfc/SitesSpec issues fixed earlier in this thread). On Adobe, that update wasn't being cleanly rolled back, leaving the shared fixture in a state my new anonymous-visibility check correctly rejected.

Fixed in 71f76de0f the same way as before: that test now edits a disposable entry (created and torn down through the API) instead of the shared fixture.

Verified locally: EntriesSpec → PublicContentAccessSpec back-to-back, plus the full 126/126 contentbox-api suite, all pass.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

71f76de0f didn't fully fix it: EntriesSpec itself now passes cleanly (16/16), but disk-queues-77caf was still 404ing for anonymous show on Adobe CF, while the equivalent pages/contentStore show-by-slug assertions passed fine. So this isn't a blanket Adobe boolean/ORM issue with published content in general — it's specific to that one seeded row.

disk-queues-77caf's slug is referenced by several other tests purely for uniqueness-validation checks (duplicate-slug 400 assertions in EntriesSpec's create/edit stories) that are expected to fail validation and never persist — I couldn't isolate which one (if any) is the actual culprit without reproducing on Adobe CF directly, which I don't have access to.

Rather than keep chasing this spec by spec, c58371801 stops the anonymous "show a published entry" test from depending on that shared fixture at all — it now creates, verifies, and tears down its own disposable published entry, the same pattern already used for the draft-entry case right below it in the same file. This removes the dependency on whatever is touching disk-queues-77caf, regardless of root cause.

Verified locally: EntriesSpec → PublicContentAccessSpec back-to-back, plus the full 126/126 contentbox-api suite.

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Generated by Claude Code

[lmajano]

All actual tests are green on c58371801: every tests / Test Suites (...) job passed (12/12 across both duplicate workflow runs — boxlang, adobe@2023, adobe@2025, all coldbox/jdk combos), and the Test Results check itself completed with conclusion: success.

The only red item is the tests / Publish Test Results job, and it's unrelated to this PR: .github/workflows/tests.yml's Publish Test Results job (line 162) grants only permissions: { checks: write }, but the EnricoMi/publish-unit-test-result-action@v2 step also runs with comment_mode: always, which tries to POST an issue comment on the PR — that needs pull-requests: write, which isn't granted. The job log confirms it: the check run itself is created successfully ("Publishing success results... Created check ..."), and only the follow-up POST .../issues/696/comments call 403s with "Resource not accessible by integration." This is deterministic (missing permission, not a flake) and pre-existing — unrelated to this PR's diff, so I'm not touching that workflow file here. A one-line fix would be adding pull-requests: write to that job's permissions block, or dropping comment_mode: always to comment_mode: off/errors if PR comments from this job aren't actually wanted.

With that aside, this PR's own CI is clean. Waiting on reviewers.

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