auto-login or auto authentication help for Vanilla 2

Jaketone

I've downloaded Vanilla and am incorporating it into a members-only site I run which already utilizes a log-in system. I am trying to figure out how to use the already existing logged in sessions and push them to the Vanilla session so that when a user logs into the site and navigates to the Vanilla Forum, they don't have to log into the forum as well.

Any suggestions?

Linc

Have you checked out the Single Sign On addon? Is it a custom log-in system or a commercially available one?

If feasible it would probably be better to authenticate with Vanilla and then bridge it to the other system. My understanding is that Vanilla2/Garden is designed to be the core of a site-wide user login system rather than the part being tacked on.

Jaketone

custom log-in system - basic too. I searched for the 'Single Sign On' add-on but nothing came up.

dietbrisk

There is an officially support Single Sign On add-on. When I installed it, it didn't work. Essentially, it just adds this to your /conf/config.php file:

$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['Type'] = 'Handshake';
$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['AuthenticateUrl'] = '';
$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['Encoding'] = 'json';
$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['SignInUrl'] = '';
$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['SignOutUrl'] = '';
$Configuration['Garden']['Authenticator']['RegisterUrl'] = '';

All you have to do is give values to SignInUrl, SignOutUrl, RegisterUrl -- which are where your normal login and register forms are -- and AuthenticateUrl, which links to a page with json data about the user who's logged in through your site --

i.e., the page should dump information like this:

@{"UniqueID":732976,"Name":"dietbrisk","Email":"*****@gmail.com","DateOfBirth":"19**-**-**","Picture":"732976.gif"}

other values that can be imported include Gender.... and you can handle any other variables you'd like to add.

...PERSONALLY, this worked extremely poorly for me. I had to re-write /library/core/class.handshakeauthenticator.php to handle my site's custom session API. In hindsight, it'd be better to have written a class.WHATEVERauthenticator.php with a class that implements GDI_Authenticator and set $Configuratio[Garden][Authenticator][Type]='WHATEVER' to keep the integrity of the Garden codebase.