ApacheDS embedded as a Tomcat Realm (was Re: [ApacheDS] Using ApacheDS for web authentication)

[Stefan Zoerner <st...@labeo.de>]

Hi Greg!

Greg Allen wrote:
> This sounds like the right solution to me too.
> 
> My next question is when?  How much work is this?
> 
> I would be happy to help, either by attempting the implementation or
> testing out something that the ApacheDS people create.


I have started a Realm implementation. A first version (proof of 
concepts) already works quite well. I have committed the sources here as 
a Maven2 project:

https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/directory/sandbox/szoerner/apacheds-tomcatrealm

It builds a jar file which contains the Realm class. In order to use it, 
one has to copy it to the Tomcat server lib directory, along with the 
required ApacheDS and dependency jars.

Activation in Tomcat server.xml is simply

<Realm className="org.apache.directory.tomcatrealm.EmbeddedApacheDsRealm" />

You can use Studio to edit your users and groups after Tomcat startup; 
the embedded ApacheDS opens an LDAP port at 10389.

I will continue testing and will provide some documentation on the wiki 
later on. Some features like configuration (LDAP port, filter 
expressions for searches, ...) are still missing, but I think it looks 
quite promising.

Feel free to check it out and provide feedback. Further discussions 
about whether we provide this as official artifact will be on the 
dev-list, which you hopefully scan as well.

Greetings from Hamburg,
     Stefan