Re: Handling session authentication in a web app

[Tom J. <tj...@do...>]

That's the conclusion I'm coming to. I'm working on storing session state
in a local database (along with encrypted username/password data).

Different question (but along the same lines):

Is there a way to test whether an attribute is writeable by the current
user? I'd like to simply display all attributes that a user has rights to
view and supply an option to edit those that may be written. Is there a
way to determine which is which short of attempting to write (and
failing)?

Thanks,
Tom

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, Mark Wilcox wrote:

> 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
>