Integrating Shibboleth authentication

Kirby 3
1

Hi everyone!

For a client project, I’m setting up a site that will include a frontend login. Logged in users will be allowed to upload images and texts that can then be approved and published by admins. For this I want to use Kirby and work along this tutorial: Cookbook – Restricting access to your site

My main issue is this: My client is a university that uses their own authentication system based on Shibboleth. People with university accounts (students, teachers e.g.) should be able to log in to the site using their university credentials.

While user data should remain on my server, authentication would be handled via the Shibboleth system. In all honesty I have never worked with an external authentication provider and don’t really now how to get started.

Is it realistic to integrate Shibboleth with Kirby? Does anyone have hints on how to get started or worked on anything similar? Any hints are appreciated!

2

External authentication is certainly doable. Your frontend login form needs to take care of two things:

  • Ensure that every authenticated user has a user in Kirby. E.g. you can check during login whether the user already exists. If not, you can dynamically create the user on the first login.
  • On login, call $user->loginPasswordless().

The rest (permissions, session handling, logout etc.) is all handled by Kirby.