Apart from authenticating a user, the authentication framework also
describes some optional entries in the authentication handler for user
management, e.g.:
<load-roles uri="cocoon:raw:/internal/roles"/>
See http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/developing/webapps/authentication.html

The only implementation AFAIK, is the user management in the authentication
framework as used by the (old) portal. To be more specific, it is
implemented in the class:
org.apache.cocoon.webapps.authentication.generation.ConfigurationGenerator.j
ava

This ConfigurationGenerator class invokes a cocoon pipeline and loads/saves
the data from/to a flat xml file.

So this is "out of the box". It gives you "add-modify-delete user
functionality with *single* role management". But it is not used very often
because I think the authentication framework itself has a steep learning
curve and this generator is only documented in the api docs. And this
generator uses the "click and show more details on the same page" approach;
e.g. select a role and it will display the users for that role on the same
page. When you want to use a multi-page "wizard" approach, you are out of
luck (you can use the framework, but you have to do some coding yourself).

And I would not call this generator "sophisticated" (delete a role, and all
200+ users for that role are deleted without a warning). Making it more
sophisticated, would require a new implementation of this generator or use
some combination of Woody+flow.  But the framework itself is OK, so please
use it as a starting point for a "sophisticated" user management.

In case someone is interested: I replaced the flat file approach of the
ConfigurationGenerator with a database and re-implemented the whole thing
using Hibernate (it is implemented with an Avalon interface, so it should be
easy to replace Hibernate with OJB). So this gives you a complete single
role-based user management, using a database and an O/R mapping tool, but it
inherits all the quirks of the original flat-file thing (by intention). Off
course I would like to make this contribution more "sophisticated", but I am
hesitating where to start and where to break the authentication-fw specs.
For example: it is a problem that the role is not included in the
authentication process. You have to check the credentials of the role
afterwards. May be Carl Ziegler is listening... I prepared a wiki page and a
zip file with examples, but I never did the upload because the Wiki was
moving and Woody was being renamed, so it is probably broken. But if someone
is interested...


Hugo Burm

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philipp Burkert [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 11:56 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Out-of-the-box sophisticated User Administration
>
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I am currently building a CMS system in Cocoon 2.1.4. Within
> this project
> the Authentication Framework is used for access restriction.
>
> After I have read through the documentation I wonder if there is any
> out-of-the-box user administration, that provides sophisticated
> add-modify-delete user functionality with role management and
> maybe even
> email verification support. Something where I can just add my
> XSLT files
> would of course be the greatest...
>
> Thankx in advance
>
> PHILIPP BURKERT
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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