Integration_API

The Integration_API enables single sign-on between an existing Rails application and any number of instances of other web applications. The Wordpress plugin is completed, and collaborators are wanted for plugins for other apps such as Beast, PunBB, or Vanilla.

The most current info about available plugin/adapters is available on the Integration_API home page:

http://greenfabric.com/page/integration_api_home_page

The basic idea

The key idea is to add a web services API into the existing Rails application, which allows one or more 3rd party apps to get the information they need, when they need it. The API should be configurable enough and general enough so that it can be added to any Rails app without modification. The Rails app stays in control of all sign-in and sign-out functions.

A 3rd party app, such as Vanilla, is installed in a subdirectory of the Rails app on the same host. If that is difficult to do, it can be installed running on a different port. These configurations will allow it to access the Rails cookie.

The Rails app will need no custom work. The third-party apps will need a small amount of programming. The following steps are performed in PHP, Rails, or whatever development environment in which the 3rd-party app runs:

• Customize the sign-in and sign-out links to point to those in your Rails app.

• Customize the function that checks if a user is signed in to do the following:

  1. Get the Rails cookie name via the API.

  2. Check for the existence of the cookie in the browser. Not there => not logged in. If there, continue...

  3. Get the cookie data and send it to the API, which returns the user info. Empty data => not logged in. If there's user data, continue...

  4. Create a new [Vanilla/Wordpress/etc.] user record if none exists yet.

  5. Allow the [Vanilla/Wordpress/etc.] sign-in function to succeed, marking the user as signed in.

The hope of this project is that this process is fairly easy to code up in mature, well-refactored 3rd-party apps. For example, the LDAP plugin for Wordpress would make a great starting point for an Integration_API Wordpress plugin.

Installation

Like any other rails plugin :

./script/plugin install git@github.com:gravis/integration_api.git

or if you want to use git submodules :

git submodule add git@github.com:gravis/integration_api.git vendor/plugins/integration_api
git submodule init
git submodule update

Assumptions

In order to use this, you should have a working Rails app that completely manages its authentication and users. It should keep track of whether a user is signed in by placing the id of a User instance into the session.

Future plans

• Make the library more flexible by supporting other user class names, etc.

• Write Wordpress/PunBB/Vanilla, etc. adapters that connect to this API.

Required constants / configuration settings

Add these statements to your config/environments/development.rb and config/environments/production.rb. You'll mostly likely need to change the USER_ID_KEY to the key that you use to store your user id in the session. For development, set the ...DEBUG variable to true.

# Constants for the Integration API
INTEGRATION_API_DEBUG               = false
INTEGRATION_API_SESSION_USER_ID_KEY = :userid
INTEGRATION_API_SESSION_ID_PARAM    = :id
INTEGRATION_API_CONFIG = {
  :login_url  => 'http://devbox:3000/page/sign_in',
  :logout_url => 'http://devbox:3000/consumer/logout'
}

# For security:
INTEGRATION_API_REQUIRED_PORT       = 3000        # Set to nil to disable
INTEGRATION_API_REQUIRED_HOST       = "localhost" # Set to nil to disable       

Testing the JSON API

After copying the controller file to your app/controllers directory and tailoring the constants, you can test the API like this:

Getting the cookie name used by your app:

$ curl http://localhost:3000/integration_api/config_info
{"login_url":"http:\/\/devbox:3000\/page\/sign_in","logout_url":"http:\/\/devbox:3000\/consumer\/logout","cookie_name":"_gf_session"}

Getting the user info for a signed-in user, based on the session id

stored in a rails cookie. (This is what my system shows -- I use OpenID for authentication. You'll see different attributes, obviously)

$ curl http://localhost:3000/integration_api/user/390f55cfd1ad5a911833a7683d2c3793
{"user": {"name":"Robb Shecter","updated_at":"2008-09-02T11:57:51-07:00","nickname":"Robb","id":2,"pref_announce_list":false,"homepage":null,"openid":"http:\/\/greenfabric.com\/robb\/","email":"robb.shecter@gmail.com","created_at":"2008-06-29T01:23:01-07:00"}}

Attempting to use the API from an unauthorized host (Debug mode enabled):

$ curl http://devbox:3000/integration_api/config_info
Bad host: localhost is required, but got devbox

Attempting to use the API from an unauthorized host (Debug mode disabled):

$ curl http://devbox:3000/integration_api/config_info
HTTP 501 -- Server error.

--

Robb Shecter robb@greenfabric.com http://greenfabric.com/robb

This document, and the entire Integration_API project has been released under the GNU public license.

Copyright (C) 2008, Robb Shecter, greenfabric.com