Athens DA Protocol
This was a working document belonging to the Computing Service's Shibboleth Development Project. This project is complete (Raven now supports Shibboleth) and this document only remains for historical and reference purposes. Be aware that it is not being maintained and may be misleading if read out of context.
As I understand it, the Shib->Athens gateway effectively uses EduServ's proprietary Athens DA protocol once you've actually authenticated. Details of the protocol are not available to the likes of us, but here are some notes on aspects of it that I have deduced.
Identifiers
The protocol apparently transfers at least two attributes to the content provider: a user name and a persistent unique ID. When using the gateway, the user name is a 20-character random string starting '_' and the persistent unique ID is set from the eduPersonTargetedID provided by Shib. Apparently there is no guarantee that the random user names won't change, though they don't at the moment.
URLs
From: David Orrell <david.orrell@EDUSERV.ORG.UK>
To: ATHENSDA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:56:23 -0000
...In fact you can now, by appending
'&ath_action=daauth&id={your_site_id}' to an Athens AAP URL.
Eg. To access the OED:
http://auth.athensams.net/?ath_dspid=OUP.OED&ath_returl=http%3A%2F%2Fdiction
ary.oed.com%2Fentrance.dtl&ath_action=daauth&id=={your_site_id}
This does not set the ldom cookie. If you want to set the cookie at the same
time, then you can use the method John suggests.
From: Eduserv Athens Local Authentication Support <athens-la@EDUSERV.ORG.UK> To: ATHENSDA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 15:08:44 -0000 ...the setorg page ensuring the ath_ldom cookie is set and bypassing the HDDS pages. e.g. https://auth.athensams.net/?id=[site ID]&ath_returl=[persistent link URL]
From: Eduserv Athens Local Authentication Support <athens-la@EDUSERV.ORG.UK> To: ATHENSDA@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 17:20:10 -0000 ... The new service URL format is called a target resource locator (TRL), which uses a combination of: * the URL of the Athens authentication point (AP) * a TRL identifier * a resource identifier The basic format of a TRL is therefore: https://auth.athensams.net/trl/1.0/-/RESOURCE_ID https://auth.athensams.net/trl/1.0/-/RESOURCE_ID?ath_action=noHddsSession
It looks as if ath_action=noHddsSession may bypass the HDD service and so alow someone logged in via the gateway to access a particular service using their Clasic Athens account
RSS feed of available resources: https://auth.athensams.net/my/resources/rss (only available once authenticated?)
Cookies
- ath_ldom, domain .athensams.net, expires 2012: contains providerID, appears to drive the Home Domain Discovery service. It may be that this can be set with, e.g., https://auth.athensams.net/?id=[site ID]&ath_returl=[persistent link URL]
