OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

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5/13/2009 10:03:32 PM
asterix
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who know binary, and those who don't

OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

As you may know the https://www.idselector.com/ site does not accept registrations anymore. They have moved to https://rpxnow.com/

There is still a free service that can be registered. After creating a new account, I get an "API Key" which is the secret key.

However, when I enable the OpenID authentication and punch in the code, the main page just shows
"Example: http://your.name.myopenid.com", the OpenID logo inside the text box and the button "Sign In with Your Open ID Account".

When I click the button, it always says "Invalid OpenID URL.", in red above, no matter what text I type in the box.

Anyway, one can register for free on rpxnow.com. The integration guide on rpxnow.com mentions several references to the rpxnow domain. For example, the signin/singup URL should be:

<a class="rpxnow" onclick="return false;"
href="https://mydomain.rpxnow.com/openid/v2/signin?token_url=your_token_url">
Sign In
</a>

I wonder what this means for using OpenID and mojoPortal, is there any need to change the source code or can still the existing version be used?

Advice would be appreciated.

5/14/2009 5:25:43 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

Hi,

Thanks for brining this to my attention, I was not aware that they had deprecated the idselector and come out with a new one. I will investigate integration of the new one. In the meantime, it is still possible to login using openid even without the id selector, it just means the user must know his open id url.

Best,

Joe

5/14/2009 8:11:17 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

Hi,

I've been reading up on the integration steps for rpxnow.com, its completely different than what we are doing now. Currently we use DotNetOpenId library and the id selector is just a widget to make it easier to pick your open id provider url. This new rpxnow.com servcie does not use the dotnetopenid, it requires an url where they redirec t the user with a token then the token is used to make a server side web request to rpxnow.com to receive either a json or xmol response with the validation results and profile info. So its a completely different implementation.

I also found some critique of it here, http://blog.nerdbank.net/2009/01/why-using-rpxnow-is-bad-idea.html that has some valid points. I think I will implement it but make it a config option whther to use it or DotNetOpenId.

I see there is a newer version of DotNetOpenId that is supposed to work in medium trust environments so I'm going to upgrade first to that and then see about implementing support for rpxnow.com

Best,

Joe

5/17/2009 9:50:52 PM
asterix
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There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who know binary, and those who don't

Re: OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

Is there some way to eliminate this type of intermediary?

E.g. suppose I only need to support Google and Yahoo accounts, we just directly link to them and bypass rpxnow.com and other such "agency" services?

5/18/2009 10:44:02 AM
Joe Audette
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Re: OpenID Selector not working, related to rpxnow.com?

Hi,

The only way to support Google or Yahoo accounts without having the user register the normal way and get a new password for your site is to use Open ID. Google and Yahoo and others support the Open ID standards, so users can sign in using those accounts if they know the Open ID uri associated with their account which they usually don't. So if you just enable Open ID in mojoPortal, users can login via Google and Yahoo using the Open ID sign in if they know how and this uses no third party services other than the Google or Yahoo open id servers. The problem is its too complicated and users don't know anything about Open ID even though their Google and Yahooo accounts support it.

The ID Selector is just a 3rd party widget that decorates the Open ID sign in to make it easier for users to figure out the correct url for their account type. It still signs in directly against the Google or Yahoo servers, the only third party thing is the widget which is just javascript. But even this widget is not friendly enough for most users. 

The RPX service is the most friendly and most likely to be useable by real world users, but it does rely on the RPX service. I have implemented support for it and am now using it on this site. It will be included in the new release coming this week.

For more info see this new documentation: http://www.mojoportal.com/using-rpx-instant-open-id-single-sign-on-service.aspx

Best,

Joe

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