A WebID Implementation

Hello, everyone. My name is Jeff Fuller, and I want to share with you my 
implementation of WebID that I developed for my website, 
FictionVerse.net <https://fictionverse.net> . I haven't been involved 
with this mailing list, and I don't mean to introduce myself by 
advertising, but I've been eager to share my work. Part of the stated 
purpose of the WebID Community Group is to "grow the community of 
implementations", so I hope this will be deemed appropriate.

You can read about the details of the implementation in a blog post I 
made, 
<https://blog.fictionverse.net/technology/the-fictionverse-webid-implementation/> 
.. It's a long post with some example code towards the end. The tl;dr 
version is that it uses a wildcard SSL certificate for WebID 
authentication and persists sessions via cookies along with a little 
trickery to emulate some useful features. It's ugly and perhaps not 
totally innovative, but it does mask some of the issues commonly faced 
when using WebID.

  * It allows you to log in, log out, and change users at any time, as 
often as needed, without restarting the browser.
  * JavaScript can be used to detect a successful or failed login, 
initiate a logout, and gain access to the authenticated WebID, in real-time.
  * Sessions are relatively easy to handle since they rely on cookies, a 
mature and well-understood feature present in all browsers.

That said, it's not a replacement for true identity management in the 
browser and better API's for dealing with user authentication. As I 
mention in the blog post, it's just a polyfill. It seems to be working 
well enough so far though.

I hope you find this to be informational, and I apologize if my 
introduction here is bad form. I'm not subscribed to the list because I 
don't feel like I can meaningfully contribute, but I do like to read 
through the archives. I very much admire the work that all of you are 
doing, and no matter what the future of WebID is, know that I'm at least 
one more soul in the world who believes in it.

Sincerely,
Jeff Fuller
<https://fictionverse.net/webid/jeff#id>

Received on Sunday, 18 May 2014 21:58:01 UTC