It looks like PassportJS is actually a general-purpose authentication middleware library, implemented in NodeJS. Much like Mahara's Auth plugin system, PassportJS lets you install plugins (called "strategies") to authentication with different sources that might be a specific site like Facebook, or a generic protocol like SAML; and then the NodeJS application developer can authenticate using a simple and consistent PassportJS API instead of having to write a specific handler for that auth method.
Unfortunately, it's not directly applicable to us in Mahara, because it's written in NodeJS not PHP. We do use NodeJS for compiling our CSS now (via gulp), but that's command-line Node scripts only during the build stage, whereas this is using Node as part of your web application. Also unfortunately, because PassportJS is so flexible, it doesn't tell us much about what specific authentication providers they're going to replace Persona with, or how they're going to go about migrating users to them. But maybe we'll see some specifics on that if we keep watching. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mahara Contributors, which is subscribed to Mahara. Matching subscriptions: Subscription for all Mahara Contributors -- please ask on #mahara-dev or mahara.org forum before editing or unsubscribing it! https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1533377 Title: Remove Persona (browserid) auth plugin by Nov 2016, because Mozilla is ending Persona support Status in Mahara: Confirmed Bug description: Mozilla has recently announced that they're ending support for the Persona authentication service, in November 2016.: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Identity/Persona_Shutdown_Guidelines_for_Reliers Mahara has long shipped with a Persona (formerly "Browserid") auth plugin. We'll need to remove this plugin from the 16.10 release, and come up with a way to help existing sites migrate their users away from Persona. We should also consider how to help out the stable release sites in migrating users away from Persona. The Nov 2016 shutdown will be very close to the 16.10 release date, so asking sites to upgrade to 16.10 to use any migration tool will be fairly demanding, particularly since 15.04 will still be covered by its extended support lifetime. So for 15.04, 15.10, and 16.04 sites, an optional Persona migration plugin is probably the best option. That way the functionality will be available to sites that need it, without shipping new features in minor upgrades. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1533377/+subscriptions _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~mahara-contributors Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~mahara-contributors More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
