Re: Handling session authentication in a web app

[Mark W. <mew...@un...>]

if you want to use permissions as they are stored in the LDAP server for
LDAP operations (not a bad idea because that way users have the same rights
regardless of how they interact with the LDAP server) you need to store the
DN and password so that you can keep binding to the server.

You either need to store the DN and Password in memory (only possible if
you're using mod_perl), in an ecrypted cookie (I use a DES encrypted
cookie) or in an encrypted file/database on the server.

I don't know of any application that does this in Perl. It's a little bit
easier to do this as a Java servlet because it has a default session storage
system that's unique per application invocation. You can do the same in Perl,
it just takes a bit more work.

Mark

Tom Jordan wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> I need to put together a web application to allow people to edit
> attributes I've given them access to (password resets for the help desk,
> radius info for the network guys, etc).
>
> I'm pretty clear on what I need to do between the script and the LDAP
> server, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle session
> authentication?
>
> I'd like to have a client log in to the web app with their uid and
> userPassword, and then be able to mess with stuff according to the
> permissions given to their object (so the script would bind to the
> directory as the user).
>
> Any suggesions on how to manage the session? Alternately, does anyone know
> of any applications like this out there that I could tweak (other than
> Netscape's DSGW, which has annoyed me on many occasions).
>
> Thanks much,
>
> Tom Jordan
> University of Wisconsin Madison