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Table of Contents

Excerpt

VIVO can be configured to work with an external authentication system like Shibboleth or CUWebAuth.

toc 

In order to effectively use an external authentication system, VIVO must be accessible only through an Apache HTTP server. The Apache server will be configured to invoke the external authentication system. When the user completes the authentication, the Apache server will pass a network ID to VIVO, to identify the user.

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Property name
externalAuth.netIdHeaderName
Description

 

The name of the HTTP header that will hold the external user's network ID.

When a user completes the authentication process, the Apache server will put the user's network ID into one of the headers of the HTTP request. The instructions from your institution should tell you which header is used for this purpose. 

Default valueNONE
Example value
remote_userID
Property name
selfEditing.idMatchingProperty
Description
Associating a User with a profile page.

VIVO will try to associate the user with a profile page, so the user may edit his own profile data. VIVO will search the data model for a person with a property that matches the User’s network ID (the value of the property must be either a String literal or an untyped literal). You need to tell VIVO what property should be used for matching.

This property is also mentioned in the insructions for A simple installation, because it can also be useful for sites that do not use external authentication.

Default valueNONE
Example valuehttp://vivo.mydomain.edu/ns#networkId

 

Finally, you will need to provide text for the Login button.

To start the authentication process, the user will click on a button in the VIVO login form. You need to tell VIVO what text should appear in that button.

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In your theme, add a line to the all.properties file, like this one:

Panel
external_login_text = [the text for your login button]

For example:

Code Block
external_login_text = Log in using BearCat Shibboleth

The VIVO login form will display a button labelled "Log in using BearCat Shibboleth".

If your site supports additional languages, add lines to the corresponding files. For example, all_es.properties might contain this line:

Code Block
external_login_text = Entrar usando Shibboleth GatoOso