[cgiapp] designing a mixed open/protected application

[P Kishor]

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 9:06 AM, Alex <capfan at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Regarding your reason to write your own Auth-module, there is a
> POST_LOGIN_CALLBACK. You can use this to do all the custom stuff you want to
> do, that CAP::Auth doesn't do. Using a session, you can store a whole bunch
> of things.
>
> Concerning the mixed runmode thing:
> I wrote a small bulletin board using CA::Dispatch, CAP:Auth and
> CAP::Authorize, and I used a predefined guest account to implement this
> mixed auth feature. In conjunction with CAP::Authorize, the guest has
> limited privileges and can't access all runmodes, a regular user can.
>
> I use a bunch of modules, but not necessarily to separate auth with non-auth
> runmodes, but to split up the tasks according to this tutorial:
> http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd363fg9_77gb4hdh7b
>
> Some other, probably OT thoughts on mixed/auth applications:
> A design problem I have is, to share data between auth runmodes and non-auth
> runmodes. E.g. data means the content of the navigation.
>
> Example:
> Navigation before login:
> - home
> - topic
> - login
> - register
>
> Navigation after login:
> - home
> - topic
> - secret area
> - logout
>
> How did you plan to do such thing?

I can do it either on the server side, creating a menu string that
goes to one single template, or use two different templates, or I can
do it on the client side with <TMPL_IF
logged_in>...<TMPL_ELSE>...</TMPL_IF>


>
> HTH, Alex
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cgiapp-bounces at lists.openlib.org
> [mailto:cgiapp-bounces at lists.openlib.org] On Behalf Of P Kishor
> Sent: Donnerstag, 4. Juni 2009 19:40
> To: CGI Application
> Subject: [cgiapp] designing a mixed open/protected application
>
> Perhaps a basic question on design and organization, but reading some of the
> articles online hasn’t been sufficient for me, so I pose my query here.
>
> I am developing an app that will have both open and login content. All my
> apps until now have had one instance script and one module, but now I am
> thinking, could I benefit from having multiple instance scripts with their
> own modules?
>
> open.cgi
> Open.pm
> http://example.com/open/view
> http://example.com/open/map
> .. and so on
>
> loggedin.cgi
> Loggedin.pm
> http://example.com/loggedin/login
> http://example.com/loggedin/view
> .. and so on
>
> Does the above seem reasonable?
>
> Now, re. the authen mechanism. I tried Cees Hek’s Plugin::Authentication and
> found it very easy to implement. However, I am still thinking of rolling my
> own because I want to extend the authentication mechanism to store extra
> values as user preferences, and Plugin::Authentication seems to have
> sufficiently complicated innards to dissuade me from opening it up and
> trying to understand it.
> Nevertheless, I have two questions --
>
> How do I indicate that specific runmodes are protected and require login?
> (mixed mode)
>
> How do I set aside an entire module (for example, loggedin) to be protected?
> (all or nothing mode)
>
> Any other advice, pointers would also be very welcome. Many thanks in
> advance.
>
> --
> Puneet Kishor http://www.punkish.org/
> Carbon Model http://carbonmodel.org/
> Charter Member, Open Source Geospatial Foundation http://www.osgeo.org/
> Science Commons Fellow, Geospatial Data http://sciencecommons.org Nelson
> Institute, UW-Madison http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> collaborate, communicate, compete
> ====================================================================