TWiki 4.2.0 OpenIDUserContrib Consumer released.

I have just uploaded the OpenIDUserContrib for TWiki 4.2.0. It adds OpenID login and 1.1 Attribute functionalty to TWiki.

Currently, it disables Registration, and limits authentication to OpenID users.

It has the advantage over the OpenIDAuth apache module, that it automatically requests the User’s OpenId 1.1 attributes like Name, Email address directly from their OpenID identity.

While it trusts the user’s choice of ‘FullName’ registration attribute when displaying who made changes to topics, the TWiki topic source
actually stores the authenticating OpenID URI, thus their user details will be updated from the authentication server next time they log in.

Note that TWiki Topic based Groups are not yet implemented using this Mapper.

Future directions

  • add mixing of UserMappers to allow OpenID and ‘normal’ TWiki auth
  • turn TWiki into an OpenID identity server
  • add Safe Group definition system
  • add OpenId to TWiki’s registration process (would require openid auth first, then prefill registration details from any available attributes
    • This will require re-writing of TWiki’s inbuilt registration system
  • move the list of Known users and their mapping information from data/OpenIdUsers.txt to somewhere more scalable. (perhaps DBI)
    • combine the info TWiki uses persistently with the Session and other caching info OpenID11? uses

Net::OpenID11 (based on Net::JanRain::OpenID)

To make this work, I fixed the Perl bugs I found in Net::JanRain::OpenID, and renamed the resulting modules under Net::openID11 (as it is not OpenID2.0). I expect to upload these packages to CPAN some time soon.

If you want to take a look at the code – goto my Subversion repository

TWiki (4.2 final) Microsoft Windows, OSX and rpm (Centos & Fedora Core i386) installers

logoed_installer.jpgThese Windows, OSX, Centos and Fedora Core installers are fully integrated native installers that will update your Computer with perl, apache, rcs and other tools needed to run TWiki on that platform.TWiki 4.2.0 contains many new improvements to TWiki, including a much improved Wysiwyg editor, a structured query engine, a more generic authentication system and at the same time, the Core engine is faster than the previous twiki4 releases.The TWiki installers include native installs of (only installed if not already)

  1. Apache 2.2 (Windows & rpm)
  2. Perl (ActiveState – Windows & native for rpm)
  3. Gnu Grep (Windows only)
  4. Gnu rcs (All platforms)
  5. TWiki 4.2.0 Release.

Please download it, try it out and report your impressions, ideas, bugs and successes here, on TWiki.org, or in the TWiki Bugs system.

Another TWiki innovation brought to you by distributedINFORMATION & WikiRing.com

Download TWiki Release 4.2.0

With the hard slog done, we’ve managed to release TWiki 4.2.0.

I will be updating and releasing the TWiki Installers, the TWiki debian package and the OpenID contrib in the next month (I need a little time to recover from the final release rush)

We’re looking forward to setting up the new release on the new Servers that were donated by Sun to the TWiki project – it’ll be fun using the DTrace probes to make TWiki faster for everyone before we start the new features for TWiki 5.0.

Windows installer of TWiki 4.2 rc2 that uses Strawberry perl 5.10 beta 2

For the extremely adventurous – I have built an installer using Strawberry Perl 5.10 beta2 – TWiki-4.2.0-rc2.1-strawberry.exe

Warning: Search does not work, and needs someone to debug it (I’m away over xmas)

TWiki (4.2 rc2) Microsoft Windows, OSX and rpm (Centos & Fedora Core i386) installers

logoed_installer.jpg

Release Candidate 2 is pretty close to what will be released within the next month.

These Windows, OSX, Centos and Fedora Core installers are fully integrated native installers that will update your Computer with perl, apache, rcs and other tools needed to run TWiki on that platform.

TWiki 4.2.0 contains many new improvements to TWiki, including a much improved Wysiwyg editor, a structured query engine, a more generic authentication system and at the same time, the Core engine is faster than the previous twiki4 releases.

The TWiki installers include native installs of (only installed if not already)

  1. Apache 2.2 (Windows & rpm)
  2. Perl (ActiveState – Windows & native for rpm)
  3. Gnu Grep (Windows only)
  4. Gnu rcs (All platforms)
  5. TWiki 4.2.0 Release Candidate 2.

Please download it, try it out and report your impressions, ideas, bugs and successes here, on TWiki.org, or in the TWiki Bugs system.

Another TWiki innovation brought to you by distributedINFORMATION & WikiRing.com

TWiki (4.2 beta) now has MS Windows, OSX and rpm (Centos & Fedora Core i386) installers

logoed_installer.jpg

These Windows, OSX, Centos and Fedora Core installers are fully integrated native installers that will update your Computer with perl, apache, rcs and other tools needed to run TWiki on that platform.

The TWiki installers include native installs of (only installed if not already)

  1. Apache 2.2 (Windows & rpm)
  2. Perl (ActiveState – Windows & native for rpm)
  3. Gnu Grep (Windows only)
  4. Gnu rcs (All platforms)
  5. TWiki 4.2.0 beta 2.

Please download it, try it out and report your impressions, ideas, bugs and successes here, on TWiki.org, or in the TWiki Bugs system.

Another TWiki innovation brought to you by distributedINFORMATION & WikiRing.com

Adding Web 2.0 interface JavaScript to TWiki

While updating the YahooUserInterfaceContrib in TWiki to the just releases 2.2 version, I started to work with the BETA DataTable module.

Firstly, I’ve had to fix TWiki to put the headers and footers into the correct thead and tfoot HTML sections, and then there are the ‘tiny buglets’ 🙂

  1. sometimes the yui component initialises with only part of the html table
  2. yui hides all rows in the thead and tfoot section (so you loose the spreadsheet calculations we do in TWiki)
  3. you have to hand define the table header elements at the moment, rather than having an option to ‘autodetect’ their names, and possible sorty-ness

But it is a nice begining. I’ll be doing further work on it in TWiki (especially in the BugsContrib, and its derived task manager), and i’m planning on replacing the Catalyst DBIx paging with the dataTable Paging in mySpending.

Wiki’s are manic

I’ve been working in the wiki space (on JOSWiki then TWiki) for years, like 6 to 7 years, and it amazes me how much hype there is now. Its nice to see that the mainstream press and business are aware of it, but the recent ‘see it doesn’t work’ complaints show, they still don’t get it.

Either you care, and when you see a mess, you clean it up, or you continue on your way. Neither is a failure, just life.

Its kind of like Wysiwyg editing, I find it distracting – thats not to say i think its pointless, but it does mean that I make different choices, from those made by others.