[Mediawiki-l] forums/phpBB again...

Sun May 29 20:42:53 UTC 2005

We did something similar to integrate MediaWiki authentication with IIS
authentication.  It involved all of around 10 lines of additional code in
User.php.  I'm not sure how much more complicated it would be to read
another application's cookies - but I don't imagine it would be
significantly more complex.

Al.

-----Original Message-----
From: Carlton B [mailto:carltonb at mindspring.com] 
Sent: Saturday, 28 May 2005 1:08 p.m.
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: RE: [Mediawiki-l] forums/phpBB again...

Actually, in my system, users are not concurrently logged on.   In a
web-based system, there really is no such state as "logged on."  You enter
your username and password, and you receive an authentication cookie and
session for that site.  As long as you have the authenticated cookie or
session, you can access the site without entering your password again.
Theoretically you could have vBB honor the MW auth cookie, or vice versa,
but this would involve changing large amounts of the MW distribution for a
questionable amount of benefit.

I think it's better just to let MW check passwords off of the vBB database,
and then let MW set up its own cookies if the passwords check out OK.  True,
the user must log into each site individually, but the password is the same
between sites.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org 
> [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Muzaffer Ozakca
> Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 5:40 AM
> To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] forums/phpBB again...
>
>
> Thanks for sharing. So, in your approach when a user logs into vBB, 
> are they automatically logged in to MW, too? It is usually easier to 
> change login procedures to change tables against which users are 
> authenticated but I'm yet to find a flexible solution to make people 
> log into MW and be logged in to others at the same time.
>
> Well, I guess there's no universal solution to this if we consider 
> that most successful open source software are feature bloats. I find 
> MW especially written well and flexible. I guess, open source should 
> go into integratibility rather than aiming at being feature rich monsters.
>
> Just thoughts...
>
> Muzaffer
>
> Carlton B wrote:
> > I went with vBB and wrote an MW authenticator by extending AuthPlugin.
> > AuthPlugin works as advertised, and you can do it if you are
> familiar with
> > the security part of your forum's database schema.  I was able
> to create the
> > following features:
> >
> > 1)  AuthPlugin validates vBB username/password combos and
> creates them in MW
> > if they don't exist
> > 2)  AuthPlugin integrates into vBB "5 strikes and you're locked
> out for 15
> > minutes" security feature
> > 3)  AuthPlugin gets the user's vBB email address and assigns it
> to their MW
> > account
> > 4)  MW rejects users if they are in vBB "Banned" groups, or custom 
> > "WikiBanned" groups.
> >
> > I did have one tiny problem that might or might not happen to
> you... for odd
> > reasons that nobody was ever able to figure, on my MW 1.4.3 I
> had to edit
> > one line of MW code to get it to work.  This is not specific to
> your forum
> > or external authenticator... it seemed to be something in my 
> > environment that nobody else could reproduce.  If you get it to a 
> > point where usernames/passwords validate in AuthPlugin but you still 
> > can't
> get logged
> > in, consider trying this:
> >
> > amend line 264 of SpecialUserlogin.php from this:
> > $u =& $this->initUser( $u );
> > to this:
> > $u = $this->initUser( $u );
> >
> > I blame it on PHP4's shoddy implementation of OO and references.
> >
> > Good luck.
> >
> >
> >
> >>-----Original Message-----
> >>From: mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org 
> >>[mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Muzaffer 
> >>Ozakca
> >>Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 12:27 AM
> >>To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> >>Subject: [Mediawiki-l] forums/phpBB again...
> >>
> >>
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>Has anybody figured a way to integrate authentication with a forum 
> >>tool like phpBB? I know Auth plugin is for this job, I'd be glad if 
> >>somebody wants to share their implementation with me/us. Is it 
> >>possible to make someone log in to one (mw or the forum) and 
> >>automatically be logged in to the other?
> >>
> >>Another question would be which forum s/w is better? I would prefer 
> >>if the forum is directly integrated or at least would look similar 
> >>to Monobook. Has anyone found a good solution?
> >>
> >>Thanks.
> >>
> >>Muzaffer
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>MediaWiki-l mailing list
> >>MediaWiki-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
> >
> >
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> >
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