protocols.md

Protocols

Out of the box, Anvil Connect supports authenticating users with local passwords, OAuth 1.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID, LDAP, and Active Directory. We call these authentication methods "protocols".

For each supported protocol, we implement a module that supports any compliant provider. This way, there's no need to write OAuth 2.0 code to support a new OAuth 2.0-based service. Within Anvil Connect, providers and protocols work together to separate the differences between authentication methods from the parts that remain the same.

In addition to what we ship with Anvil Connect, it only takes a small amount of code in your project to authenticate using virtually any other method. You can customize your Connect instance to use additional providers and protocols by creating special directories in your project and adding some JavaScript.

Adding protocols

To add a new protocol, create a connect/protocols directory in your Anvil Connect project and add a JavaScript file named for the protocol. The filename should be a camel cased string.

This new module should export a Passport strategy that has two extra functions appended to it: verifier and initialize. You can use any virtually existing Passport strategy as a starting point, or write your own from scratch.

/**
 * Dependencies
 */

var Strategy = require('passport-ANYTHING').Strategy;


/**
 * Verifier
 */

function verifier (req, [?..,] done) {
  // ...
};

Strategy.verifier = verifier;


/**
 * Initialize
 */

function initialize (provider, configuration) {
  return new Strategy([...], verifier);
}

Strategy.initialize = initialize;


/**
 * Export
 */

module.exports = strategy;

The verifier function is the callback that get's invoked by Passport once authentication has completed.

Verifier

Initialize