thoughts of a doug

I have uploaded a new module to the CPAN: Authen::CAS::External. Yes, the module was actually uploaded a while ago, but I have not gotten around to writing about it until now. This module performs authentication against a CAS server on behalf of a user. Currently the module only supports simple authentication using a username and password or using an already authenticated ticket granting cookie.

The main purpose of this module is not really for web scrapers, as they can easily just fill in the form with a username and password and proceed onward, but for more specific uses of the CAS service by third party clients. A use case I am using this module for is to authenticate with the CAS server with a username and password and get the ticket for a specific service, which I can then use to gain access to the service with that username and password on an entirely separate browsing session.

There is one more scenario I use this module for, and that is to authenticate against the CAS server, and then hand over the ticket granting cookie to another process which can then log into services using that CAS server without ever knowing the username and password.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
 
use 5.008001;
use strict;
use warnings;
 
use Authen::CAS::External 0.01;
use URI;
 
my $authen_server = Authen::CAS::External->new(
    cas_url  => URI->new('https://cas-server.example.net'),
    username => 'testaccount',
    password => 'testpassword',
);
 
my $response = $authen_server->authenticate(
    service => 'https://some-service.example.net/',
);
 
if (!$response->is_success) {
    print {*STDERR} "Invalid credentials supplied\n";
    exit 1;
}
 
print $response->ticket_granting_cookie, "\n";
 
exit 0;