OpenSAML Velocity templates for POST etc. responses

[Michael A Grady]

On Jan 3, 2013, at 7:54 PM, Cantor, Scott wrote:

> If absolutely necessary, but since session lifetime has nothing to do with
> SSO behavior, it's not that essential to change it. The main thing in
> internal.xml one may be inclined to change is the reloadability of some of
> the configuration files, but that's not all that common in production
> either.
> 
>> That would be in the IdP's source tree? So you'd create a
>> "classes/templates" directory in the 'src/main/webapp/WEB-INF' directory
>> of the install tree?
> 
> Yes.

Scott, do you think the Shib Dev team would consider adding a 'classes/templates' directory to the 'src/main/webapp/WEB-INF' directory of the Shib IdP distribution, with four sample Velocity templates that could be used to override the OpenSAML ones? Have them named the same, but with a ".ga" (for Google Analytics) as an additional suffix so that an institution wanting to use them has to rename them before doing the 'install'? These templates would have the Google Analytics tracking code embedded in them (that is generic, and would work for anyone), and woudl otherwise be identical to the current OpenSAML ones. And I would figure out if there is a way to have a separate file in that same 'templates' directory in which one would configure the appropriate GA accountID, and which would be #include -ed in each of those sample templates? (Worst case you'd have to edit each of those you wanted to use to put that GA accountID into them.) I'd commit to adding documentation to the install instructions, and a new page on the Google Analytics capability, describing how one could use this.

That would also have the advantage of making it easier/clearer to deployers how they could otherwise modify those templates for other purposes. For example, as the following documentation at CalNet indicated they changed those templates (and used the internal.xml file config option I asked about before):

 https://wikihub.berkeley.edu/display/calnet/Shibboleth+IdP+version+2.x


> 
> -- Scott
> 


--
Michael A. Grady
Senior IAM Consultant, Unicon, Inc.