March 18, 2006

Single Sign-On with CAS (Central Authentication Service)

March 18th 2006 Posted to Articles, Java

First things first,

What is Single Sign-On?
: Wikipdedia has this definition for it.

CAS (Central Authentication System): Its a project started by Yale university to provide a trusted way for an application to authenticate a user (ref: The JA-SIG CAS Project)

I came across CAS when i was searching for a Single Sing-On framework for a project, i did find another similar project Java Open Single Sign-On Project (www.josso.org). And the reason why i choose CAS is its Proven track record. CAS has been successfully implemented in a lot of projects not to mention Yale University has been using it for a long time now (Ok you could have guessed that :p).

When i downloaded the source and deployed the web application that came with it, i thought the java cas-client would work just out of the box. Well it would have, if i had a valid server certificate for my tomcat server, compared to my self-signed certifcate to make tomcat work with SSL. Wasn’t too long until i realized what was causing the problem the class edu.yale.its.tp.cas.util.SecureURL (inside the Java Cas Client) that was downloaded from http://www.ja-sig.org/products/cas/client/javaclient/index.html which didn’t accept my self-signed certificate from the server. So i just went back and changed it :) Everything after that went super smooth, not to mention trying to use CAS everywhere i could :p

I played around with it a bit and installed a simple LDAP Authentication handler for the CAS Server application, this is an extract from the file WEB-INF/deployerConfigContext.xml

<bean id=“ldapAuth” class=“org.tecnova.cas.authentication.handler.support.LDAPAuthenticationHandler”>
     <property name=“providerUrl”>
         <value>ldap://localhost:389</value>
     </property>
 
     <property name=“credentialQueryString”>
         <value>cn=#username#,ou=Employees,dc=tecnova,dc=com</value>
     </property>
 
 </bean>
 …
 …
 …
 
 <property name=“authenticationHandlers”>
     <list>
         <bean class = “org.jasig.cas.authentication.handler.support.
 HttpBasedServiceCredentialsAuthenticationHandler”  />
         …
         …
         <ref local=“ldapAuth” />
     </list>
 </property>

and to enable CAS authentication on the client application all we need are the following entries in the WEB-INF/web.xml of the Client web application.

<web-app>
 …
 …
     <filter>
         <filter-name>CAS Filter</filter-name>
         <filter-class>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.CASFilter</filter-class>
       
         <init-param>
             <param-name>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.loginUrl</param-name>
             <param-value>https://localhost/cas/login</param-value>
         </init-param>
 
         <init-param>
             <param-name>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.validateUrl</param-name>
             <param-value>https://localhost/cas/proxyValidate</param-value>
         </init-param>
 
         <init-param>
             <param-name>edu.yale.its.tp.cas.client.filter.serverName</param-name>
             <param-value>localhost</param-value>
         </init-param>
 
     </filter>
 
     <filter-mapping>
         <filter-name>CAS Filter</filter-name>
         <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
     </filter-mapping>
 …
 …
 </web-app>

Remember my tomcat is set to listen on port 80 and has SSL enabled, CAS won’t work without SSL enabled on your app server.

For rest of the details on what I did I have attached a sample Server and Client web application. Which can be downloaded here.

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March 14, 2006

Using Apache Axis to create Web Services

March 14th 2006 Posted to Articles, Java, Open Source

Apache axis, is one of the best way to deploy Web Services without needing to buy those expensive Application Servers out there. Axis is deployed as a simple web application, with web services deployed as either simple .jws files or more complex compiled classes. Web Services can either be coded as simple java classes and later renamed to .jws rather than the usual .java, when invoked via axis using a url like http://localhost:8080/axis/services/MyService.jws, Axis compiles the code and exposes it as a SOAP Web Service. The other way of deploying a web service is by compiling the code and writing something called as the "Web Service Deployment Descriptor (WSDD)" WSDD files describe a Web Service,ex: the actual class and the methods that have been exposed in the Web Service, the scope of the Web Service etc. A sample axis Web Application which contains both a service (Calc) and a Client for the Web Service (Calc.jsp) can be found here.

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March 9, 2006

Using Jasper Reports with Hibernate and Teamwork

March 09th 2006 Posted to Articles, Java, Open Source

Jasper Reports is the perfect open source reporting tool for the masses, heres a code snippet to generate the "Operator by Worklog" sample report using Jasper Report in Teamwork 3

 

CompanyCalendar cc = new CompanyCalendar();
 
 cc.set(CompanyCalendar.YEAR, cc.get(CompanyCalendar.YEAR) – 1);
 cc.set(CompanyCalendar.MONTH, CompanyCalendar.JANUARY);
 cc.set(CompanyCalendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);
 
 OqlQuery oql = new OqlQuery(“select new map(r.id as id, r.personName as personName , r.personSurname  as personSurname, sum(w.duration) as worklog_total) from com.twproject.resource.Resource r, com.twproject.worklog.Worklog w where w.assig = r.myself and w.inserted > :paramInserted and r.myself is not null group by r.id”);
 
 oql.setParameter(“paramInserted”,cc.getTime());
 List persLog = oql.list();
 
 Map parameters = new HashMap();
 
 InputStream reportStream = new FileInputStream(
 request.getRealPath(“applications/teamwork/reports/jrxml/new_worklog.jrxml”));
 JasperDesign jasperDesign = JasperManager.loadXmlDesign(reportStream);
 JasperReport jasperReport = JasperManager.compileReport(jasperDesign);
 
 JRBeanCollectionDataSource ds = new JRBeanCollectionDataSource(persLog);
 JasperPrint jasperPrint = JasperManager.fillReport(jasperReport, parameters, ds);
 
 //—- Export PDF —-
 JasperManager.printReportToPdfFile(jasperPrint, request.getRealPath(“”) + “/applications/teamwork/reports/output/report.pdf”);
 
 //—- Export HTML —-
 JasperExportManager.exportReportToHtmlFile(jasperPrint, request.getRealPath(“”) + “/applications/teamwork/reports/output/report.html”);

 

Sample worklog.jrxml for Teamwork 3

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March 4, 2006

Welcome

March 04th 2006 Posted to News

Hi, welcome to my little place on the net.
Your can find most of my work here including articles, notes, tutorials, links, downloads … hmm…what did i miss…..

oh yeah, BLOGS!! :)

don’t forget to visit Khokhar’s Hut

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