29 May
2007
29 May
'07
3:09 p.m.
I have also implemented SSO with XWiki, and also agreed that the rights management of
XWiki was very robust. Further, I didn't want to take away (or re-implement) the
XWiki rights administration tools, because while authentication (from an enterprise
standpoint) is a matter for the corporate security authorities, authorization to wiki
resources is a matter for the wiki admins.
My solution, which has since been applied to many other J2EE applications in our
enterprise, is to use a servlet filter to intercept the requests, check out the
SSO-supplied cookies, and redirect to the SSO service if not found, without having to
implement our own XWiki authentication service. Actually, two instances of the filter
were created: one optioned to redirect if proper authentication cookies were not found,
and one that simply passed through in that event. In this way, we could get and use the
identity of those who were authenticated without requiring authentication to paths that
didn't require it. Indeed, because XWiki redirects any unauthenticated request for an
action requiring authentication to the login page, the authentication-required version
only needed to be mapped to the /login/* url-pattern.
It also handled the registration of any user who hadn't been seen before, and mapped
attributes provided by the SSO cookies to XWiki groups, through an XWiki document which
associated a cookie field and a regular expression with a group, so that if the specified
cookie field matched the regular expression, the user was added to the group. In this way
a proper separation of duties was maintained between the enterprise SSO system and the
local administration which it informed. Equally important for me, I didn't need to
modify any XWiki code, so that migrating the solution to 1.0 required only making the same
modifications to the user profile document that had been made to the 0.9.840 instances and
importing the group mapping page.
brain[sic]
-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Krämer [mailto:tk@ontopica.de]
Sent: Tuesday, May 29, 2007 6:43 AM
To: xwiki-users(a)objectweb.org
Subject: Re: [xwiki-users] Which forum to use with XWiki
hey shiva,
i finished exactly the scenario you depicted yesterday:
the many advantages of xwiki (as blog and wiki engine)
combined with an advanced forum, that takes into account the
discoursive nature of knowledge development in enterprises as
well as in non profit contexts.
in brief, there are two major issues: authentication and
authorisation.
fortunately the xwiki developpers have done a good job in
providing a configurable mechanism to switch the
authentication class (see xwiki.cfg or the respective section
in the admin guide)
You implement the XWikiAuthService and probably the
XWikiAuthenticator interfaces and at the next login,
credentials are verified you defined in these classes. i do
an (layered) access to an existing application (the forum
part of your scenario; it's not necessarily the better user
management, it simply was there first).
a little trickier is the second issue, authorisation.
i decided to let the quite mature user / group / right
management systems of both apps as untouched as possible, but
enable one of them to rule over the other.
sergiu uttered the idea of a REST approach, which i turned
into some kind of remote control for the xwiki user management.
so, whenever my forum admin want to have a new group, a new
group is created in both systems, a space with the id
[groupname] is created where only grup member have edit rights etc.
i attached an outline of that class.
that is, however, not the only way to do what you want, and
possibly not even the most appropriate.
Yours
Thomas
shivshan schrieb:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi
I have been thinking of integrating XWiki into a portal for
sometime.
The ideal scenario would be to have a wiki, forum
and blog all
integrated within the Portal, which is the company's knowledgebase.
Am debating whether to use SSO for different standalone apps like
XWiki, JForum etc or take a plunge into Exo/JBoss.
Any inputs/experiences would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Shiva
Antonio Goncalves wrote:
> Thanks for the information. I think that like Paul I'm
going first to
> install and use JForum (and give up phpBB),
and then set
it up so SSO
> is used between both applications.
>
> Antonio
>
>
> 2007/4/19, THOMAS, BRIAN M (ATTSI) <bt0008(a)att.com>om>:
>> Antonio:
>>
>> This response is probably not much use, but it might be,
and besides
>> I enjoy showing off my brilliance...
>>
>> Because JForum is a J2EE implementation of phpbb, moving
to it will
>> probably be less difficult for users (and
maybe
administrators as well).
>> We
>> have installed JForum (and Roller for blogging) on the same
>> appserver with our XWiki instance. The integration of
the three was
>> limited to placing links to them in
XWiki's viewheader
menu. This
>> has (I think) one small advantage over
phpbb since, as J2EE
>> servlets, all could share the appserver and its session, so that
>> logging in to one is logging in to all.
>>
>> However, all three used separate user databases and hence
separate
>> registration despite being on the same
host and being skinned to
>> look mostly like a single application. This resulted in a lot of
>> user confusion, because it was not clear that they needed to
>> register individually on each of the three applications -
I received
>> numerous calls from users who didn't
understand this.
>>
>> If you use XWiki's LDAP plugin (and your forum tool has an
>> equivalent
>> option) or a similar mechanism to what we are now doing -
which is a
>> servlet filter that digests cookies set
by our SSO server and
>> automatically registers users in each one - this will all go much
>> more smoothly, of course.
>>
>> The filter is simple to deploy but, with very little
standardization
>> in J2EE security practices (none that I
know of in the user
>> lifecycle space) it can be challenging to adapt to each servlet's
>> specific registration needs.
>> In my case, the generic filter was finished in about three days
>> (counting the time it took to learn the relevant Servlet
API parts)
>> but the adapter class that applied it to
XWiki took more than two
>> weeks. This was just a little above the average: one JSP
developer
>> took my jarfile one morning (while the
filter was still in
>> development), informed me of a bug around noon, waited
for me to fix
>> the bug and deliver the new jarfile, and
had it working
with his app
>> before he left for the day; the guy
working with Roller
took about
>> three weeks (though, to be fair, he was
also fighting the
vagaries
>> of a new release of Roller with a very
different configuration of
>> the ACEGI security package). JForum took about the same
as XWiki,
>> mostly because of having to interact with
other servlet
filters in
>> its deployment.
>>
>> brain[sic]
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Antonio Goncalves [mailto:antonio.mailing@gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 17, 2007 2:37 PM
>> *To:* xwiki-users(a)objectweb.org
>> *Subject:* [xwiki-users] Which forum to use with XWiki
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> With my XWiki I need a forum so people can exchange
information on
>> various topics. I'm installed phpbb
but I was wondering
if there was
>> any "better"
>> integration between another product (JForum or JavaBB).
Has anybody
installed such product ? Any feedback ?
Thanks,
Antonio
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