Making the connections between AD and iTunesU

Question

Folks,
I'm not a programmer and don't know the first thing about getting the scripting to work properly. We are an ASP.Net place as well as some ColdFusion users. Any chance somebody has made authentication work with either of these two languages and could help me get the ball rolling?
hehe, I don't even know how to login into the stupid thing. I feel like George Jetson....

Answer 1

iTunes U works quite nicely with ColdFusion. Information for your developers:
ColdFusion does not support the Java byte type. Make these changes to the ITunesU.class provided by Apple:
line 90, change:
public String hmacSHA256(String message, byte[] key) {
to:
public String hmacSHA256(String message, String secret_key) {
byte[] key = secret_key.getBytes();
line 251, change:
Date time, byte[] key) {
to:
Date time, String secret_key) {
byte[] key = secret_key.getBytes();
line 281 change:
String signature = this.hmacSHA256(buffer.toString(), key);
to:
String signature = this.hmacSHA256(buffer.toString(), secret_key);
line 308, change:
Date time, byte[] key) {
to:
Date time, String secret_key) {
byte[] key = secret_key.getBytes();
line 332, change:
buffer.append(this.hmacSHA256(data, key));
to:
buffer.append(this.hmacSHA256(data, secret_key));
line 526, change:
now, key);
to:
now, sharedSecret);
compile from the command line: javac ITunesU.class
for ColdFusion:
(get createJavaObject from cflib.org and it include it in your cfml)
your code (basiclly):
<cfset secret_key = "STRINGOFTHIRTYTWOLETTERSORDIGITS">
<cfset epoch_time=LSNumberFormat((createobject("java", "java.util.Date").getTime()) / 1000, "_")>
<cfset cred_admin = Replace(URLEncodedFormat("Administrator@urn:mace:itunesu.com:sites:YOURSCHOOL.e du", "utf-8"), "%2E", ".", "all")>
<!--- form.uid is from your login form that submits here --->
<cfset ident = Replace(Replace(URLEncodedFormat('"#fullname#" <#form.uid#@YOURSCHOOL.edu> (#form.uid#)', "utf-8"), "%20", "+", "all"), "%2E", ".", "all")>
<cfset tokenData_admin = 'credentials=#credadmin#&identity=#ident#&time=#epochtime#'>
<cfset loader = createJavaObject("./")>
<cfset ITunesU = loader.loadClass("ITunesU").newInstance()>
<cfset signature_admin = ITunesU.hmacSHA256(tokenDataadmin,secretkey)>
<cfset site_url = "https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/YOURSCHOOL.edu">
<cfset debug_url = "https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/YOURSCHOOL.edu/YOURDEBUGST RING">
<cfoutput><xa href="#siteurl#?#tokenData_admin#&signature=#signatureadmin#">administrator login</xa><xbr>
<xa href="#debugurl#?#tokenData_admin#&signature=#signatureadmin#">administrator debug</xa>
</cfoutput>
(xa xbr are to stop Apple's forum from redering them as HTML)
There is plenty of documentation on how to auth ColdFusion against Active Directory. Basically, you use a <cfldap> tag and modify the attributes, scope, etc for you particular environment.
Hope this helps. It should give you pretty much all you need to get up and running with ColdFusion/iTunes U.
-qk.