NAME

Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible - extensible authentication framework for Dancer apps

DESCRIPTION

A user authentication and authorisation framework plugin for Dancer apps.

Makes it easy to require a user to be logged in to access certain routes, provides role-based access control, and supports various authentication methods/sources (config file, database, Unix system users, etc).

Designed to support multiple authentication realms and to be as extensible as possible, and to make secure password handling easy (the base class for auth providers makes handling RFC2307-style hashed passwords really simple, so you have no excuse for storing plain-text passwords).

SYNOPSIS

Configure the plugin to use the authentication provider class you wish to use:

  plugins:
        Auth::Extensible:
            realms:
                users:
                    provider: Example
                    ....

The configuration you provide will depend on the authentication provider module in use. For a simple example, see Dancer::Plugin::Auth:Extensible::Provider::Config.

Define that a user must be logged in and have the proper permissions to access a route:

    get '/secret' => sub :RequireRole(Confidant) { tell_secrets(); };

Define that a user must be logged in to access a route - and find out who is logged in with the logged_in_user keyword:

    get '/users' => sub :RequireLogin {
        my $user = logged_in_user;
        return "Hi there, $user->{username}";
    };

AUTHENTICATION PROVIDERS

For flexibility, this authentication framework uses simple authentication provider classes, which implement a simple interface and do whatever is required to authenticate a user.

For an example of how simple provider classes are, so you can build your own if required or just try out this authentication framework plugin easily, see Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible::Provider::Example.

This framework supplies the following providers out-of-the-box:

Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible::Provider::Unix

Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible::Provider::Database

Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible::Provider::Config

CONTROLLING ACCESS TO ROUTES

Subroutine attributes are used to indicate that a route requires a login, or a specific role.

Multiple roles can easily be provided as a space-separated list, for example:

    get '/user/:user_id' => sub :RequireRole(Admin TeamLeader) {
        ...
    };

(The user will be granted access if they have any of the roles denoted.)

If you only care that the user be logged in, use the RequireLogin attribute instead:

    get '/dashboard' => sub :RequireLogin { .... };

If the user is not logged in, they will be redirected to the login page URL to log in. Currently, the URL is /login - this may be made configurable.

Replacing the Default /login and /login/denied Routes

By default, the plugin adds a route to present a simple login form at that URL. If you would rather add your own, set the no_default_pages setting to a true value, and define your own route which responds to /login with a login page.

If the user is logged in, but tries to access a route which requires a specific role they don't have, they will be redirected to the "permission denied" page URL, which is /login/denied - this may be made configurable later.

Again, by default a route is added to respond to that URL with a default page; again, you can disable this by setting no_default_pages and creating your own.

Keywords

logged_in_user

Returns a hashref of details of the currently logged-in user, if there is one.

The details you get back will depend upon the authentication provider in use.

user_has_role

Check if a user has the role named.

By default, the currently-logged-in user will be checked, so you need only name the role you're looking for:

    if (user_has_role('BeerDrinker')) { pour_beer(); }

You can also provide the username to check;

    if (user_has_role($user, $role)) { .... }

user_roles

Returns a list of the roles of a user.

By default, roles for the currently-logged-in user will be checked; alternatively, you may supply a username to check.

Returns a list or arrayref depending on context.

authenticate_user

Usually you'll want to let the built-in login handling code deal with authenticating users, but in case you need to do it yourself, this keyword accepts a username and password, and optionally a specific realm, and checks whether the username and password are valid.

For example:

    if (authenticate_user($username, $password)) {
        ...
    }

If you are using multiple authentication realms, by default each realm will be consulted in turn. If you only wish to check one of them (for instance, you're authenticating an admin user, and there's only one realm which applies to them), you can supply the realm as an optional third parameter.

In boolean context, returns simply true or false; in list context, returns ($success, $realm).

SAMPLE CONFIGURATION

In your application's configuation file:

    session: simple
    plugins:
        Auth::Extensible:
            # Set to 1 if you want to disable the use of roles (0 is default)
            disable_roles: 0
            
            # List each authentication realm, with the provider to use and the
            # provider-specific settings (see the documentation for the provider
            # you wish to use)
            realms:
                realm_one:
                    provider: Database
                        db_connection_name: 'foo'

Please note that you must have a session provider configured. The authentication framework requires sessions in order to track information about the currently logged in user. Please see Dancer::Session for information on how to configure session management within your application.

AUTHOR

David Precious, <davidp at preshweb.co.uk>

BUGS / FEATURE REQUESTS

This is an early version; there may still be bugs present or features missing.

This is developed on GitHub - please feel free to raise issues or pull requests against the repo at: https://github.com/bigpresh/Dancer-Plugin-Auth-Extensible

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

None yet - why not help out and get your name here? :)

LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2012 David Precious.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; or the Artistic License.

See http://dev.perl.org/licenses/ for more information.

cpanm Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Dancer::Plugin::Auth::Extensible