Question

How can I set using value from a HTTP Header. We want to use a SSO product to authenticate user, then the SSO product passes the username as a HTTP header to Apache/Twiki. Can Twiki grab that HTTP Header directly, or we need to set it up somewhere?

Environment

-- BenLiang - 14 Feb 2006

Answer

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This is certainly possible, perhaps in a plugin that makes calls to CPAN:CGI to get headers (maybe there's a better way...), but definitely feasible with a core code change.

There does of course need to be some validation that this is a valid header - a cryptographic hash or something to ensure that it is the SSO product that has set the userid. Otherwise, it would be very easy to just fake the authentication. Probably the SSO product has some way of doing this, but this would somewhat complicate the plugin that does authentication.

Googling for TWiki, authentication, LDAP and SiteMinder may turn up some useful discussion and plugins.

-- RichardDonkin - 15 Feb 2006