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Use shibboleth attributes as authenitcation information in Plone

Project description

Use shibboleth attributes in Plone.

Change history

0.8a1 (2010-04-06)

  • copied from old-style product 0.7 [tom_gross]

Detailed Documentation

Overview

Extend Plone’s folder_localrole_form to grant permissions to Shibboleth users.

ShibbolethPermissions replaces the folder_localrole_form with a slightly modified page that has a Shibboleth section added. The Shibboleth section depends on configuration made in AutoUserMakerPASPlugin. When configured, when a new user logs in via Shibboleth, permissions will be granted on existing objects based on user specified regular expressions.

This doesn’t do anything for already existing users that log in via Shibboleth. Those users can have permissions granted via the regular Plone method, since they already exist as Plone users.

Requirements

  • Zope and Plone. Tested with Zope 2.10.11 and Plone 3.3.4

  • AutoUserMakerPASPlugin.

Installation

  1. Add Products.ShibbolethPermissions to the eggs-section of your buildout

  2. Rerun the buildout.

  3. Restart Zope.

  4. Install the plugin: Go to your-plone-site -> site setup -> Add/Remove Products, and install ShibbolethPermissions.

Using Shibboleth Permissions

For Administrators

  1. In the ZMI, in the acl_users/AutoUserMakerPASPlugin’s config tab, scroll to the end.

  2. There are two input areas: the left one lists all Shibboleth attributes that will be available to users. Examples are all of the attributes listed in the setup and mapping headers. The AutoUserMakerPASPlugin’s README.txt has an example PHP page that when set up, will show all of the attributes getting set by Shibboleth.

  3. The right input area is a corresponding list of labels that users see for the attributes in the left area. Enter attribute labels in the right input box.

  4. Click Save.

When users have granted permissions, the ZMI’s options tab will list the permissions. There will be a checkbox that allows deleting all of the rules for a path. The path will also be a link that the adminstrator can use to quickly get to the Plone sharing tab, which can be used for individual rule editting.

For Users

  1. In Plone, select the sharing tab on the item you want to share. If you don’t see a sharing tab, Plone doesn’t think you have permissions to do so.

  2. In the sharing tab, scroll down to the Shibboleth Permissions section. Each attribute that has been configured above will be show with an input field. Each input field is a Python regular expression. See the python re module at http://docs.python.org/lib/module-re.html and Dive Into Python’s Regular Expressions chapter at http://diveintopython.org/regular_expressions/. Simple strings work.

  3. Select the role(s) to be granted.

  4. Click ‘apply settings’.

Once you’ve set up a rule, Plone will show a ‘Manage existing rules’ form. In that, delete a rule or rules by selecting the checkbox to the left of each role you want to delete, then click ‘delete selected shibboleht pattern(s)’.

To modifiy the roles granted by a rule, select the checkbox for a rule, then select roles to assign, and then click ‘assign selected role(s) to selected shibboleth pattern(s)’.

To change the source values for a rule, create a new rule, then delete the old one.

Design Rationale

I made the decision to have the configuration done in AutoUserMakerPASPlugin for two reasons. First is just that the other Shibboleth attribute configuration is already there, making for easy reference to what attributes are already in use. Second, because that plugin does the assignment of roles when a user logs in via Shibboleth for the first time. While I can see the utility of making an interface for AutoUserMakerPASPlugin that ShibbolethPermissions implements as a way of decoupling ShibbolethPermissions from AutoUserMakerPASPlugin, I don’t have any plan to do that.

The plan is for this to be a drop in plugin that works with existing themes, rather than having to modify a theme to accomidate Shibboleth Permissions. Any theme that modifies folder_localrole_form in Plone 2.5 (not that I can imaging why any would do that) or the sharing.pt file in Plone 3.0 will need to be modified by hand.

Testing

To run the ShibbolethPermissions tests, use the standard Zope testrunner:

$INSTANCE_HOME/bin/zopectl test -s Products.ShibbolethPermissions

Credits

Alan Brenner, of Ithaka Harbors, Inc., under the direction of the Research in Information Technology program of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundaton, wrote ShibbolethLogin. I’d like to thank Paul Yuergens of psych.ucla.edu for testing.

Support

For right now, email alan DOT brenner AT ithaka DOT org, or see if I’m on irc.freenode.net channels #plone, #plone4edu or #weblion as AlanBrenner.

Contributors

  • Alan Brenner, Author

  • Tom Gross, Contributor

Project details


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Products.ShibbolethPermissions-0.8a1.zip (42.9 kB view hashes)

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