[insight]Non FAS Login

[Hiemanshu Sharma]

On 06/08/2011 06:05 PM, Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 08, 2011 at 08:54:19AM +0530, Hiemanshu Sharma wrote:
>> Most of you know my GSoC project is on Fedora Events System and I am
>> slowly getting started with it right now (Darned exams kept me out
>> for a long time). Now when a new event is created anyone can attend
>> it and register online for it. Well for first timers we don't really
>> expect them to have FAS accounts so I would like to allow login via
>> OpenID, twitter and/or Facebook which allows access to only a
>> specific part of the site (they can register for events, comment on
>> posts and vote for bar camps events). What are your thoughts on
>> this?
> I think it makes perfect sense for your project to accept all these
> other authentication types.  Authentication via FAS should not be a
> requirement or blocker.
>
> Having said that, what you'll find is that the AuthFAS plugin I wrote
> is extremely lightweight and "plays well with others."  It's no
> different than these other types, except that it offers the additional
> feature of mapping a FAS group to a specific Drupal role.  That means
> that if you end up using roles to assign permission levels for
> different types of users, you can manage them through FAS if desired.
>
> Now if I remember correctly, the AuthFAS module actually allows
> validation of a login even if there's no FAS account.  See line 320
> here:
>    http://git.fedorahosted.org/git/?p=drupal6-authfas.git;a=blob;f=authfas.module
>
> The question is whether other validation methods like OpenID are each
> consulted in turn as part of the user_login_authentication_validation
> function's normal performance.  I admit I haven't tested that because
> it wasn't a design criterion for our system.
>
> What I suggest is that you install the AuthFAS plugin and see how well
> it plays with these other validation options.  If it doesn't work
> well, I'd like to know about it so I can improve the module.  In a
> Fedora instance of your events system, we'd certainly like people to
> be able to register/login via FAS but that shouldn't be the only
> option.  So it's up to us to fix drupal6-authfas so that would work
> properly, if needed.
>
>
Makes sense. I'll do this tomorrow evening and let you know the results.

-H