Multiple websites, Single sign-on design
- by Yannis
Hi all,
I have a question. A client I have been doing some work recently has a range of websites with different login mechanisms. He is looking to slowly migrate to a single sign-on mechanism for his websites (all written in asp.net mvc).
I am looking at my options here, so here is a list of requirements:
1) It has to be secure (duh)
2) It needs to support extra user properties over and above the usual name, address stuff (such as money or credits for a user)
3) It has to provide a centralized user management web console for his convenience (I understand that this will be a small project on top of whatever design solution I choose to go for)
4) It has to integrate with the existing websites without re-engineering the whole product (I understand that this depends on the current product implementation).
5) It has to deal with emailing the user when he registers (in order for him to activate his account)
6) It has to deal with activating the user when he clicks the activate me link in the email (I understand that 5 and 6 require some form of email templating system to support different emails per application)
I was thinking of creating a library working together with forms authentication that exposes whatever methods are required (e.g. login, logout, activate, etc. and a small restful service to implement activation from email, registration processing etc.
Taking into account that loads of things have been left out to make this question brief and to the point, does this sound like a good design?
But this looks like a very common problem so arent there any existing projects that I could use?
Thanks for reading.
