Topic: Separate authentication module for sharing applications?

Hi it's me (James) again, sorry for the bandwidth but I have questions that are important to me...

I would like to know if it is possible for you developers to create a standards-based user authentication module that could be shared by different PHP applications.  I would like my registered website users to be able to login once in a session and have all of my applications recognize them : PunBB, Gallery, and maybe other applications like phpBB, Coppermine, Tiki (which I am dropping), etc.

This is really important to me, and probably to other folk too.  This partially addresses the "integration" issue with other apps.

A second nice feature would be some kind of common CSS, at least for major elements like Font style, size, Headings, etc. that each application could call in addition to its own CSS.  I don't know how this would work.

Would it be possible for the community of PHP application developers to work together to create a shareable authentication module?  Thanks!

James

James Melhuish

2 (edited by Frank H 2004-10-06 13:53)

Re: Separate authentication module for sharing applications?

I guess it would be possible to do, but that module would be ineffective for everyone (info not used in that particular tool, but are in the users table as some other tool must use it), and if someone suddenly realise he/she needs to redo some parts of it to suit his/her needs, they other must also agree/disagree and perhaps alter lots of code to comply with the changes made.
And a big issue, different developers have different opinions on what's safe and unsafe, how one should solve some issues, etc. ... It's not a blakc & white world we're living in wink

I understand why you want this, but it will really make life hard for everyone, except those that install more than the forum, like the gallery or something.



Best is probably to wish that someone with lots of time has time enough to make a bundle of different things ... but, it will require lots of work, no matter how one do it... like some have made with some cms systems etc.