OpenSAML user discussion

["Mark Wilcox" <>]

Much of PHP (and the other scripting languages like Python and Perl) is a
layer of translation code around existing C/C++. This is why you can be very
powerful with these languages very quickly - there's lots of C libraries out
there - but the scripting languages are easier to work with.

And because they're calling C, there's very little performance penalty.

So essentially what you have to learn how to do is to extend PHP so that PHP
can call the OpenSAML C++ toolkit. The benefit is that you're writing PHP
but underneath you're taking advantage of the C++ OpenSAML toolkit directly
- as opposed to passing data to an external program.

But since you said that it's a shared environment - you're not likely going
to be able to use PHP extensions either.

Mark



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Antoine Tissier 
> [mailto:]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 5:24 PM
> To: 
> 
> Subject: RE : PHP
> 
> Thx for your answers.
> 
> But actually, i am afraid that as a user of shared hosting, i will not be
> able
> to use this solutions.
> 
> (Java integration is quite new and is not actived by default).
> 
> I am not sure i have understood the idea of a PHP wrapper around the
> library.
> Do you mean a "facade" that will invoke a program (through cgi or
> "passthru")
> that will encapsulate all the functionnalities of the toolkit ?
> 
> Thx in advance
> 
> Antoine
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> If you're doing PHP -- the better approach would be to use a PHP wrapper
> around the C++ library. Or you might be able to do it with the Java
> libraries since I think Java integration is part of PHP5.
> 
> Mark
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Scott Cantor 
> > [mailto:]
> > Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2004 3:08 PM
> > To: 'Antoine Tissier'; 
> > 
> > Subject: RE: PHP
> >
> > > Is a PHP version of the Open-SAML Toolkit is planned ?
> >
> > Not by me...
> >
> > > If not, what is the most reasonable way to use SAML in a PHP
> > > application.
> >
> > It depends what you need to do. If you want to parse or create the XML
> > (which is all the OpenSAML library does for the most part), I guess
> you'd
> > either need to one-off it, or create a similar set of abstractions.
> >
> > AFAIK, all other implementations of SAML and related pieces are in Java
> or
> > I
> > think Ping has a .NET version. No PHP that I know of.
> >
> > Are there any PHP tools that can generate PHP code from an XML schema?
> > That
> > might be a place to start.
> >
> > -- Scott