2008-05-02 OpenID and Oddmuse

I’m trying to figure out how to use this OpenID thing. I followed the links on the OpenID site and reached Sam Ruby’s OpenID for non-SuperUsers.

links on the OpenID site

OpenID for non-SuperUsers

I then added the following to my site’s HTML headers:

_

And then I did the OpenID check using my blog URL – https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki. The check correctly read the OpenID server, but the response must be broken. What is LiveJournal’s server URL?

OpenID check using my blog URL

https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki

I decided to try with my LiveJournal identity – http://kensanata.livejournal.com/. It said that my server is at http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml. Cool. I’ll try that instead.

http://kensanata.livejournal.com/

http://www.livejournal.com/openid/server.bml

_

Works! And login works, too. Awesome.

Now let me take a look at Net::OpenID::Consumer – a Perl library that would replace the current login dialog.

I wonder whether the OpenID record somehow indicates my nick or real name... That would be required for Oddmuse. And perhaps I’d reuse the homepage parameter in the cookie. Hm... That should work.

Writing non-functional login page... Done.

Using Net::OpenId::Consumer to do the login... Damn. When it should verify the login it just crashes. Perl crashes – no error. This sucks.

I just realized that Net::OpenID::VerifiedIdentity will not provide you with a nick or real name unless you’re lucky. 🙁

I also realized that this is going to be trickier than I thought with redirects to the remote site and “return to” URLs. Yikes!

Without really good caching, this means that I will have to introduce sessions. I can’t store the key in the cookie or anybody can fake it. Thus, the cookie only holds a session ID. I would have to store session information on the server. That also means that I have to “expire” sessions. This sucks.

Combined with aforementioned problem that OpenID doesn’t allow me to retrieve a username – I only get to guess it – I conclude that it is *not worth the effort*.

​#Oddmuse ​#OpenID ​#Web