Examples

Generic querying

Any other application could be configured to query from the Django database to retrieve session/user data.

Assuming the DB backend is used, you would use a query along the ways of:

SELECT
    users_user.username,
    users_user.email
FROM
    users_user,
    sessionprofile_sessionprofile sp
WHERE
    sp.session_id = '<sessionid_from_cookie>'
    AND users_user.id = sp.user_id

This requires:

  • the application can read the session cookie (hosted on same domain)

  • the application has (read) permissions on the Django database

phpBB3

Installing the authentication plugin

It’s fairly easy to authenticate from phpBB3 with Django, although some minor modifications are needed in the phpBB3 source.

Two files should be included in the <phpBB3 root>/includes/auth folder. Keeping these files in version control is possible, you can symlink to them.

The code snippets are fairly long and can be found in the phpBB3 include snippets.

Note

phpBB 3.1.x supports extensions now, which is radically different from the way that 3.0.x mods are installed. This code will not work on 3.1.x or higher versions.

Local phpBB3 install modifications

A few modifications are required to keep the users from getting confused.

Templates

Templates in phpBB3 live in <phpBB3 root>/styles/<theme>/template

  • You’ll want to modify login_body.html. Logging in directly is usually not possible due to the CSRF protection.

    An example replace file could be:

    <!-- INCLUDE overall_header.html -->

<div class="panel">
<div class="inner"><span class="corners-top"><span></span></span>

<div class="content">
  <h2><!-- IF LOGIN_EXPLAIN -->{LOGIN_EXPLAIN}<!-- ELSE -->{L_LOGIN}<!-- ENDIF --></h2>

  <p>
  Only registered users on our site can post in these forums.  If you have registered
  already, you can <a href="/login/">log in</a>; if not you can
  <a href="/register/">register</a> - it only takes a few minutes.

</div>
<span class="corners-bottom"><span></span></span></div>
</div>

</form>

<!-- INCLUDE overall_footer.html -->

  • overal_header.html has some checks and links to the login/register pages. You should modify this and set it to your own.

  • IMPORTANT You’ll need to edit adm/index.php and remove an the lines that make you login again to go to the admin panel.

    They look like this:

    30if (!isset($user->data['session_admin']) || !$user->data['session_admin'])
31{
32   login_box('', $user->lang['LOGIN_ADMIN_CONFIRM'], $user->   lang['LOGIN_ADMIN_SUCCESS'], true, false);
33}

Enabling auth_django

Make sure you have Django user who was the same username as an admin of the phpBB forum, and log in as that user in Django and phpBB.

You can now go into the phpBB admin panel and enable the auth_django authentication module.