16 July 2009, 13:18

I need to develop an authentication plugin so that my users can SSO in to mahara from Blackboard.

 I am not sure where to start - the lib.php file for the xmlrpc, internal, and none authentication methods seem like they'd be a good place to start.  Other than copying them - how do I get mahara to recognize that i've got my new plugin installed? just copy the files?

 I'm going to be using a technique similar to what the xmlrpc plugin does - giving the user a token which they hand to the Mahara server, which the Mahara server then goes and validates against Blackboard.

Any help would be appreciated!

19 July 2009, 17:38

Hi - I think the XMLRPC plugin is probably badly named - it should be called MNET instead. It wouldn't be a good idea to try and change it to work for blackboard I think.

You'd probably have to write a new plugin. Blackboard provides something that from memory is called 'Power Connectors (r)(tm)(c)' that maybe you could write an adaptor for. If it's just a web-service based thing, then potentially you could borrow some code from the XMLRPC plugin to help.

To get a plugin to count as installed, you should copy the files, rename the classes in lib.php (which is the only file absolutely required for any plugin), then visit the 'Administer Extensions' page in the admin section. There will be a link there to install it. Note that you might need to clear out the db/ directory in the plugin, or alter it for your needs (ignore that if you don't have a db/ directory).

11 August 2009, 10:59