Feature Proposal: Want Backslashes in Login, to support Windows Authentication

Motivation

Make it easier to interface twiki to Windows authentication.

Description and Documentation

From SysadminJohnMechalasTWikiComments.

TWikiRegistration maps an external LoginName to an internal-to-twiki WikiName.

At Intel, and many other companies, the external LoginName is a Microsoft Windows domain name \ idsid - e.g. something of the form AMR\glew, domain\username.

Note the backslash.

John Mechalas says that one of his biggest annoyances with twiki is that it does not support backslashes in LoginNames.

When John first started supporting twiki, he patched twiki by hand to accept such backslashes. (I do not know if he ever provided the patch back to twiki.org.) Eventually he gave up on patching twiki, and patched the authentication tools to change, e.g. AMR\glew to AMR.glew. Although better than patching twiki, this is still not desirable, because now it is a patch on yet another external tool.

It would be better - less work - if TWiki could just accept Windows LoginNames containing backslashes. Maybe TWiki would change them to dts or the like.

Non-starters

It is not acceptable to simply drop the domain. We need the domain.

Examples

Impact and Available Solutions

Implementation

-- Contributors: AndyGlew

Discussion

-- AndyGlew - 09 Jun 2006

Thanks Andrew for bringing your feedback to TWiki.org, this is a sensible request that fits the TWikiMission. Your feedback helps the community stay focused. Hopefully a developer will pick up on this.

-- PeterThoeny - 09 Jun 2006

Andy. If your colleague John Mechalas has patched TWiki many times he should post his patch here on twiki.org or on develop.twiki.org on a bug report. I have rarely seen developers turn down a good patch.

-- KennethLavrsen - 10 Jun 2006