Free Java Authentication/Administration Tools

Question

Hi all,
I thought it might be helpful to some of you if I shared my source code for iTunes U authentication. I also have included in the webapp a basic set of admin utilities with a showTree feature. The fun part of the showTree features is that I have written a digester that instantiates java objects of the xml nodes, so you can extend it to do any number of things (please honor the license agreement though!-)
There is a README.rtf that has the webapp instructions.
You can download the war file and all source from here:
http://uonline.utah.edu/temp/iTunesuFreeTools.jar
Hope this finds its way into "usefulness" somewhere. Enjoy!

Answer 1

I've just installed this. (I had to also modify server.xml to include context before connection pooling would work. See below.)
Yeah, I am using virtual hosting, so your experience may differ. Thanks for the solution post!
I'm trying to get a better understanding of how I can use the framework to allow visitors to download content. Any help or documentation would be great..
You can use the [email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu permission to allow unauthenticated users to download and stream content, of course, or you can publish a visitor login and password. There are 3 visitor profiles already listed in the visitor table; to download, edit, and shared. You can add the permissions to objects like this:
[email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu with download access level.
[email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu with edit access level.
[email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu with shared access level.
So, to clarify, any_uid, when authenticated from the within the visitor table will be given the [email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu credential. I added this for our staff that want to give seminars to professors where they can work on private test courses. But, you can use it for anything you choose. I also added the nonkdcauth table for the soul purpose of sharing the app with others. We use Kerberose to authenticate, and ldap to pull course credentials. Any uid listed in the nonkdcauth table will be given the [email protected]:itunesu.com:sites:yourschool.edu credential.
The credentials are built in the edu.utah.uonline.ViewBean. Refer to the source for adding or understanding the features. Sorry, not very well commented, but hopefully not too obscure.
Also, I'm a little confused on how to get this working with LDAP. I know our LDAP server and I know that we use 'cn' instead of 'uid'. I also know that we can traverse everything below our 'o=trinity'. Not sure how to fill out the resource file to make it work.
The hardest thing for me when I started writing java code to do lookups against LDAP was the connection stuff. This code can be found in the edu.utah.uonline.ViewBean as well (starting in line 156, initProperties(boolean useLDAP)). Each ldap server can be set up differently so you will need to know your structure to implement it. This code will also have to be changed to reflect your specific filter information (line 169 of same source file).
Just another couple thoughts about kdc and ldap. I originally added these features, like storing uids and passwords in tables to build our credentials so that I could publish the webapp for those who did not use KDC or LDAP. Hence, useKDC and useLDAP from the properties file was an after thought. If you choose to try to implement these features at your school, make sure you also check you kdc connection specific properties in the Resources.properties file and then change useKDC and useLDAP to "true" (also found in the Resources.properties file) and then check all connection and filtering code in both edu.utah.uonline.ViewBean and edu.utah.uonline.Login.
Nice work. I've been frustrated with this custom integration since we signed on to iTunes. Now I see light at the end of the tunnel.
Glad to help!