Last modified: 2011-03-13 18:06:24 UTC
I have written an authentication extension which provides automatic and transparent authentication to a wiki based on existing authentication to a co-located BOINC project. To make it really seamless I'd like to request the addition of a UserLogin hook in wfSpecialUserLogin(), as described at the attached URL (which links into a larger page about the plug-in). I'm new to MediaWiki so I think I figured out that this is the best way to do this, but I'm open to suggestions of something better.
Use the existing AuthPlugin interface to write authentication plugins, with the AutoAuthenticate hook if needed.
My plug-in does in fact use the AuthPlugin interface, which allows us to redirect login/logout links in PersonalLinks. But there are multiple places where a wiki user may be asked to authenticate and redirected to Special:UserLogin. We want to use BOINC for all authentication, so this needs to be redirected. The hook I propose is one way to do it, and seems to be the easiest. I found nothing in AuthPlugin which would allow us to redirect any request for a login to the BOINC login page.
And my plug-in uses the AutoAuthenticate hook. All that works. The one case that is a problem is if an anonymous user tries to do something (eg create a talk page) which requires authentication, then they are sent to Special:UserLogin rather than to the BOINC login page. The hook I'm requesting takes care of that.
