rack_my_openid - a one-user OpenID provider solution for rack

So you have a Rack/Sinatra/Rails-powered blog and you want to make it an OpenID?

Now you can do it in under 5 minutes.

Rack_my_openid is a simple, single-user OpenID provider inspired by (now deprecated) phpMyId. It uses

• ruby-openid for the protocol implementation;
• simple Yaml files for storing configuration;
• in-memory storage for authentication data;
• HTTP Digest authentication for security;
• Sinatra and Rack as the server backend.

It's designed to be drop-in compatible with any Rails application, since implementing OpenID is a confusing exercise even with ruby-openid. I extracted it from my own site/blog and am continuing to use it there.

It's fully covered by RSpec tests.

See the OpenID specs if you really want to understand how the whole thing works.

• Add the rack_my_openid gem to your Gemfile

• Add this to your routes:

    match '/openid' => RackMyOpenid::Provider 
    match '/openid/*whatever' => RackMyOpenid::Provider 
  

  The /openid path can't be changed, as of this release.

• Create a config/rack_my_openid.yml file (see below)

• Create a config/initializers/rack_my_openid.rb file:

    RackMyOpenid::Provider.set YAML.load_file('config/rack_my_openid.yml')
  

• Restart your Rails app and you're good to go.

• If you make any changes to the config you'll have to restart the app to pick them up.

This assumes that the OpenID is the root path.

• Install the rack_my_openid gem.

• Create a config.ru in your desired path with these contents:

    require 'rack_my_openid'
    RackMyOpenid::Provider.set(YAML.load_file('rack_my_openid.yml'))
    run RackMyOpenid::Provider
  

• Create a rack_my_openid.yml file (see below) in the same path

• Create empty /public and /tmp directories in the same path

• Deploy with Passenger, Rackup or whatever Rack handler you fancy.

This is a simple flat Yaml file. The keys are symbols (as of this release).

• :credentials - run md5 -s 'yourusername:rack_my_openid:yourpassword' (or replace rack_my_openid with your realm name if you changed it);
• :openid - the actual OpenID identifier that you want to provide;
• :realm - the realm for HTTP Digest auth. The default is "rack_my_openid", why would you change it?
• :endpoint_url - the URL of the OpenID endpoint (the one that's '/openid'). You shouldn't explicitly declare it
• :store_path - recommended - a path to OpenID store on the filesystem. If you're running Rails, it could be a catalog under /tmp

• Support SReg data extension
• More integration test coverage
• Refactor and document code more

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(c) Leonid Shevtsov http://leonid.shevtsov.me