Martha Coleman <mcoleman@UAFORTSMITH.EDU> wrote:
> Hello,
> I would be interested in the portal information.  We have a pretty low
> tech solution for titles requiring username and password.  We wanted
> some way to allow access 24/7 so we created a page on our campus
> website that must be logged into...the url begins https rather than
> http.  The 856 in the marc record provides 2 links...one to the secure
> username/password page then a link to the web site to login.  Here is
> a sample record:
> http://libcat.uafortsmith.edu/search/j?SEARCH=science+teacher
> Martha

That's a very clever low-tech solution.  :) (maybe more of a mid-tech
solution).  And awesome that you have https that you can put such things
behind.

In my ideal world, each journal would have its own wildcard dns on your
server (but you'd want a wildcard ssl cert for that, which is more
expensive than a regular cert).  And that would really just be icing to
make things look cleaner.

For the portal, what you'd essentially be doing is "spoofing" each
intended journal, pulling the requested page, feeding it to the
end-user, rewriting all the links to point back to your spoof site.
When the journal popped up its "please log in" page, your server would
submit the proper credentials without displaying that, and then show the
subsequent page.

Python would be the ideal language for implementing this (it has some
excellent libraries for scraping and DOM editing), but it's reasonable
to solve in just about anything, whatever the expertise on staff.

The two main problems that jump out at me would be 1) maintenance -- if
the site changed its login process, you'd have to catch that and adjust
the script accordingly; and each journal would require a small bit of
fine-tuning; and 2) javascript -- if the site obfuscates its navigation
through javascript, it would be more difficult to rewrite that (though
still plausible).

And all this could be behind the same https user login authentication.

One completely random note -- "These pages are Tested for viewing at
resolution 1025x768 " <-- the standard is 1024x768. :)

--
-kaolin imago fire
-Founding Editor, GUD Magazine
-http://www.gudmagazine.com/