JForum Authentication Client

Description/Features

Plugin jar for JForum to allow authentication to occur against a crowd instance instead of JForum's own authentication.

Features

• User login authentication against crowd.
• Auto-registration of users with JForum on 1st login if they are successfully authenticated by crowd.

Auto-registration is particularly useful if you configure Crowd to delegate authentication to a directory such as LDAP which contains all company users. The first time a company employee logs into JForum with crowd he/she will automatically be registered with JForum.

Usage

Building the source

Skip this step if you do not want to change the source code and download the pre-built jar instead (see above).

Setup for build

1. Download the source zip (see above)
2. Install Maven 2 if not already installed
3. Unpack the zip to your preferred location
4. At the command line go into the unpacked zip's directory
5. Run the following command to install JForum's jar into Maven so the project will compile
   mvn install:install-file -Dpackaging=jar -DartifactId=jforum -Dversion=2.1.8 -Dfile=lib/jforum-2.1.8.jar -DgroupId=net.jforum -DgeneratePom=true

Edit, compile and build source code

1. Edit the source files found in src/main/java as required
2. At the command line go into the unpacked zip's directory
   • Run the following command to build the jar
     mvn clean install
   • Run the following command to build the javadoc
     mvn javadoc:javadoc

JAR files and Javadoc will be found in the generated target directory.

Installing and Configuring the authenticator in JForum

Install the JAR and supporting crowd libraries

Copy the jforum-crowd-authenticator-X.X.jar and all client libraries supplied with crowd standalone download to jforum.war/WEB-INF/lib.
i.e. crowd-integration-client-x.x.x.jar and the contents of the lib directory all within atlassian-crowd-x.x.x/client directory

See Crowd Downloads.

Configure JForum Authentication

Edit jforum.war/WEB-INF/config/SystemGlobals.properties and update the login.authenticator line to

login.authenticator = com.dolby.crowd.integration.JForumCrowdAuthenticator

Configure JForum crowd connectivity

Add a crowd.properties file to jforum.war/WEB-INF/classes configured for your crowd instance. An example is supplied with crowd (see atlassian-crowd-x.x.x/client/config) e.g.

session.lastvalidation=session.lastvalidation
session.isauthenticated=session.isauthenticated
application.password=password
application.name=jforum
session.validationinterval=0
crowd.server.url=http://localhost:8080/crowd/services/
session.tokenkey=session.tokenkey
application.login.url=http://localhost:8080/crowd/console/

The main properties that require amending in the properties file are:
application.password
application.name
crowd.server.url
application.login.url

Setup Crowd

Create a new application in crowd with the name and password that matches the crowd.properties you installed in JForum. See crowd docs on configuring a new application in crowd and adding users/groups etc.

Running JForum

Start up JForum and go to JForums login page. Logging in will now authenticate against crowd and if the user is authenticated by crowd but has not been authorised in crowd the user will automatically be registered in JForum.

Examples

Version History

Screenshots