Adding additional client-side auth options (for subscription service) about ngas

[aragilar]

Yep, this is subscription client side (as the JWT can be handled by apache or whatever server side). So yeah, this requires #8.

I suspect there's going to be a bunch of iteration on the design (I have a hacky plan which I don't like, but I want to have a try to get a feeling for how this goes). I created the issue mainly so people are aware of the new changes, and if they have a need to use this auth framework also, they can pitch in ideas/suggestions.

[rtobar]

Hi @aragilar, thanks for the initiative! When I first read your description I thought you were planning to modify the way you do authentication on the NGAS server side when receiving archive/retrieve/status/etc requests, but after reading a couple of times I got the impression this is more a feature you want to add only on the client side of the subscription service. Could you clarify your original intent?

If you are planning to modify the server side: this work would have two parts: first, adding the framework to allow for arbitrary authentication methods (config bits, module loading, existing code refactoring into new module, etc); then building on that there would be a new JWT-based authentication module. In that case the first part of the work would be independent of #8, and thus could be implemented and tested separately, while the second would be more specific and bound to #8.

If you are planning to modify the subscription client side: I guess this does indeed build on top of #8 no matter what, and indeed you'd have to wait until that is finished.

If you are planning to modify both: well, it's a mixture of the above I guess...

Please be aware that the whole subscription service needs a proper cleanup. You will find an old-ish branch called subscription_thread_ng that I started some time ago with a complete rework of the subscription logic to make it easier to follow and maintain, but ensuring backwards compatibility is always hard, and I haven't had the time to finally merge that back into the master. In any case, any new logic you add to the subscription service (and that applies to #8) we'd eventually merge into the new subscription thread implementation.

[aragilar]

Uh, silly question but where is the subscription_thread_ng, I can't see it on github (whether on this repo, or on any of the forks)?

[rtobar]

My bad, it was actually only in my computer, I'm pushing it now

[aragilar]

It looks like this wasn't automatically closed by #15, closing now.