Shibboleth Developers

[Chad La Joie <>]

I've checked in what I believe to be a fairly complete interface for the 
Shibboleth 2.0 Authentication Handlers:

http://svn.middleware.georgetown.edu/view/trunk/src/edu/internet2/middleware/shibboleth/idp/authn/AuthenticationHandler.java?root=java-idp&view=markup

The interface is pretty simple and should allow easy inter-operation 
with external authentication sources (e.g. container, Apache, other 
SSOs).  The goal is to keep it simple too.

The operation is fairly simple, the IdP will determine which handler to 
invoke by looking at a lot of internal information (e.g. whether you've 
authenticated before, when you did so, what type of criteria are present 
on the incoming request, etc.) and if authentication is required it will 
invoke the appropriate handler.  The appropriate handle is either the 
one set as the default in the IdP config or the one corresponding to the 
AuthnContext Class/Decl URI provided in the authentication request.

Once the authentication method has been invoked the handler will have 
complete control and may interact with the user however is necessary in 
order to authenticate the user.  Once that is complete the handler (or 
some other servlet/JSP it passed off to), must then forward the current 
request/response pair backed to a location provided to the handler (via 
setReturnLocation(String).

The incoming request to the handler will contain the SAML 2 
authentication request representing this request (even if the actual 
system making the request is not a SAML 2 based system) within a request 
attribute.  The handler must ensure the user's principal name is set in 
a request attribute when it returns control back to the IdP.

As I said, this should allow Shib 2.0 to be hooked in to any AuthN 
environment that 1.3 currently works in.  We will ship, at least, a 
forms based userid/password handler, a remote user based handler (that 
works like Shib does now), and probably an IP based one.

Comments/Questions?
--
Chad La Joie             2052-C Harris Bldg
OIS-Middleware           202.687.0124