Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

Currently, MediaWiki has an AuthPlugin module that allows third-party developers
to easily write an extension to authenticate MediaWiki logins against another
database (like our intranet app).  This is wonderful, but it'd be great to be
able to start a MediaWiki session when a user logs in to our app.  That way, we
can include a link to our wiki site inside our app and the user doesn't have to
re-enter their username and password...they're already logged in.

I thinking of something like this (pretend this is the authentication code for
our app):

if ($username and $password are valid)
{
  setCookie(our cookie);
  
  // This eventually uses our AuthPlugin subclass which authenticates to our
intranet
  // database
  $mw_session = new MediaWikiSession($username, $password);
  
  // This sets the MW cookie(s) and effectively logs the user into MW
  if ($mw_session)
    $mw_session->startSession();
  else
    ...handle error...
}

Thanks for reading.