Handling LDAP Authentication exceptions

Question

I am looking for any documentation or advise on how to handle authentication exceptions from an LDAP source. More specifically, I need to be able to notify users when their passwords are expired or wrong and then redirect them to a self-service password page. I have the sel-service page, I just have no idea where and how to intercept the authentication response.
Nigel

Answer 1

Hi Nigel,
In it is not currently possible for the portal to differentiate between different reasons for the login to fail. For example, it cannot tell you that a user login failed since the remote authentication source is down vs. the user used the wrong password. Internally, the LDAP Native Auth Provider candifferenetiate, and this prevents users from getting locked out when the remote LDAP server is down or the connection to it is being flaky vs. someone trying the wrong password 3 times in a row. Unfortunately, this is not currently exposed via our event interface.
I'd recommend you check out the following "events" via PEI (Plumtree Event Interfaces):
OnBeforeLoginOnAfterLoginOnFailedLoginOnBeforeLogin
The third one (highlighted above) is probably what you want to hook into and redirect to your self-service password page. On this page, you should tell the user that they were unable to login and that this could be for any of many reasons, and help them diagnose the problem.
You can read more about PEIs in Chapter 7 of the 5.0.2 UI Customization guide. G'luck!
-aki-