login and share cookie with 3rd party program

[paulie]

I have another [custom] system that I want to use the username/password DB from my CMSMS install.

Where can I find details about the cookie's set by CMSMS ? or is it session based ?

Thanks for your help !

Paul

[Jeff]

A place to start looking is action.do_login.php in modules/FrontEndUsers that is the file that logs the user in.

[Pierre M.]

Hello Paul,

are you talking about using the CMSms DB as a authentication base for a third party system or trying a single-sign-on on both systems ?
If SSO : with CMSms backend (admin side) or with FEU ? both ?
If SSO : does it have to be bidirectional ?

Please elaborate simply on the use case.

Pierre M.

[paulie]

Thanks ajprog for the pointer on where to start looking.

Pierre M. : IU would like the person to be able to log in via either CMSMS Admin CP or via the 3rd party app. Once they are logged in they can see the admin stuff from CMSMS and the admin side of the 3rd party app. Also specific users, from FEU would be able to log in and see a 'user display' too.

Basically I want to be able to set the cookies from either side, and allow them to be read / set / destroyed by my app.

THANKS !

[Jeff]

The admin and FEU have completely different auth methods/style

[Pierre M.]

So you want full bidirectional SSO. For this you need an SSO implementation shared by both softwares. I am afraid it is hard to find. As pointed above even inside CMSms admin and FEU don't share a SSO framework.

Pierre M.

[studygroup]

Hi All,

Pierre, from what you are saying it sounds like that CMSMS does not support SSO? This is sad news... Is it really the case, or is it just difficult to find the specific SSO implementation that would support CMSMS and the other tool of your choosing? Does CMSMS support any SSO implementation at all? I need to find a way to integrate FEU with Moodle, preferably via SSO, as I am pretty new to web dev and won't be able to handle much of custom coding.

CMSMS seems to have such a long list of features and a huge number of users, so it is pretty hard to believe that it would not support SSO of some kind..

Thanks,
Oleg

[Jeff]

Studygroup,

No we don't support SSO, but that doesn't mean that you can't have a developer integrate FEU with a third party.

It will require a bit of custom coding probably both with FEU and Moodle.

[studygroup]

I guess I got misled a bit by the old exchange I found in blogs (see below). It's a 2.0 (+?) discussion. Based on it I started hoping that at least some hooks are already there that I may attempt to leverage. Unfortunately I don't have access to dev and my tech skills are limited.
Could you please give me some guidance on what specifically needs to be changes and in what places? I'm thinking of setting up the latest version of dev 2.0 and trying to enable sso.
Out of curiosity, any particular reason why this had not been given any serous consideration?
Thanks,
Oleg
1. Colin 
February 19th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
2. In the “I want a pony” vein, are you considering adding OpenID support for user accounts and blog commenting?
3. Ted 
February 19th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
4. @Colin: Yes, and yes. OpenID is already in there as a login mechanism. It needs some cleaning up, but the basics work now.
5. Colin 
February 20th, 2008 at 12:11 am
6. Ted: That is great news! I cannot help with the code, but I would love to help with the usability on this. I recently looked at Drupal 6’s OpenID implementation and was very disappointed because it is almost an afterthought rather than a first class citizen. The point of OpenID is single sign-on. It doesn’t make any sense for either the user or the admin to have to create site centric usernames and passwords in order to use OpenID. Creating new accounts from an admin standpoint should be as easy as pasting in a user’s OpenID, if you know it

[Jeff]

If you aren't a dev it isn't worth me trying.

[studygroup]

Let me correct my first statement, - I am not a web developer, and not a developer for the past several years. However, I had been a pretty advanced Power Builder developer for about 8 years and taught in a programming school. Hopefully this kind of skills you never forget once learned, like riding a bicycle, so I maybe worth a shot.

[calguy1000]

I'm thinking of setting up the latest version of dev 2.0 and trying to enable sso.

Don't do it... 2.0 is not yet stable enough for people to be working with.  There are problems with the installer, and with content editing... and the SSO stuff isn't in this version of 2.0 anyways.

[studygroup]

Ok, thanks. Felt like a tempting thing to do, but I'll wait with 2.0. I guess for now I would have to try implement "simultaneous" sign-on, rather than single, which would appear as single to the users. Let me dig into FEU code and see if I can manage do that.