[Phplib-users] three tier auth made possible

[Giancarlo <gia...@na...>]

Now I go with my examples (and needs).
Suppose I want Site A to release authentication based on being registered to 
Site B. All users registered at Site B are automatically authenticated for 
Site A too.
The auth resides on Site B. Site B has an XMLRPC or SOAP or .NET xml 
interface that accepts  authentication info in the form of XML data, it has a 
services that, upon receiving XML credentials, replies with som XML data 
containing a kind of session token. Or, as an alternative, the XML 
credentials containing the login info are always passed back and forth with 
each request
It can also receive some XML data to accomplish a registration.

How could accomplish this using the existing phplib auth feature?
I think by decoupling the testing of the user-provided input from the action 
itself. 
Site A gets the input via a form. Then SiteA calls the authentication service 
on SiteB and passes to it the values and a precisse request: authenticate 
this guy, or register this guy.
SiteB replies with some token that Site A will keep in the session, and 
always will pass this over to  SiteB when requesting his features for the guy.

So Site A propagates the session, but Site B does the authentication.
Site B knows nothing of the input fields that are used in Site A pages. It 
only performs certain action upon receiving certain fields accompaigned with 
a certain request. Still the same authentication service of Site B should be 
used for visitors of his own site.

Other examples, always in the same modulation:

-All users that register at Site A will get automatically registersed also at 
Site B.
-Users registered at Site A will then pull down some personalized content 
from their user profile at Site B

How do you accomplish that if not by decoupling the registration process from 
the actual interaction with the client, included keeping the state 
propagation?

So you see that  you can only accomplish this by keeping the authentication 
functions callable separately (not a cascade), unrelated to the input 
provided (abstract), not even related with any interaction with the client 
(no splash forms) etc. Auth becomes a service. 
Page.inc at this point (because it happens *before*calling the auth 
methods)can be a local interface that interacts with the local client, or a 
wire interface that handles thos XML/SOAP/.NET remota calls.