DocsForIt!

Authentication

JsonFileUserManager - A UserManager

A UserManager is an interface, which provides authentication features. Most user manager classes also provide a system to create new users or delete existing ones.

We'll be using the JsonFileUserManager, which does all authentication based on a small json file. Thus it's easy to create new accounts.

Download the json-file-user-manager plugin and install it as json-file-user-manager.

The users file

We now need to setup a users file

$ vim etc/users.json

with the contents:

[
    {
        "id": 1,
        "login": "admin",
        "password": "1234",
        "properties": {
            "first_name": "Alice"
        }
    }
]

You should easily figure out, that our user can login with admin:1234 and has his first name set to Alice.

auth plugin

Since authentication is a pretty common matter, there is already a plugin called auth which provides authentication against a user manager implementation.

Configuring the plugin mix

Now we finally need to configure the setup. Open the config.js

$ vim config.js

and append:

config.setValues({
    "auth": {
        "user_manager_engine": "JsonFileUserManager",
        "user_manager_options": {
            "file_name": __dirname + "/etc/users.json"
        }
    }
})

Adding a Login-Field to the HtmlLayout

Now we need to update the HtmlLayout

$ vim views/HtmlLayout.ejs

and replace this:

            <div id="page_navigation">
                <h2>Sections</h2>

with the following:

            <div id="page_navigation">
<%
    if (context.session) {
%>
                <h2>Welcome</h2>
                <p>Hello <%= context.session.user_name %>. <a href="/logout">Logout</a>?</p>
<%        
    } else {
%>
                <h2>Welcome</h2>
                <p>Please <a href="/login">login</a></p>
<%
    }
%>        
                <h2>Sections</h2>

This will show us a nice info, that and if you are logged in at all.

Now go and test if you are able to login with login: admin and password 1234.

Editing Sections only for authed people

Now we'll add a little addition to docs-controllers.js

Replace:

new Controller("docs.api.storeSection", {
    "execute": function(params, context) {
        var self = this;
        return function(cb) {
            var section_name = context.params.section;
            var content = context.params.content;

            docs_manager.storeSectionContent(section_name, content)(function(error) {
                cb(JSON.stringify(error ? false : true));
            });
        };
    }
});

with:

new Controller("docs.api.storeSection", {
    "execute": function(params, context) {
        var self = this;
        return function(cb) {
            var section_name = context.params.section;
            var content = context.params.content;

            if (!context.session) {
                cb(JSON.stringify(false));
                return ;
            }

            docs_manager.storeSectionContent(section_name, content)(function(error) {
                cb(JSON.stringify(error ? false : true));
            });
        };
    }
});

Now only authenticated users will capable to make changes to any sections.