Sharepoint: How can I deploy a custom authentication provider?

Question

How can I deploy a custom authentication provider in MOSS 2007?

Is there any provided functionality to do this (like a Sharepoint feature)?

Or do I have to install it in the GAC on each box in the farm manually?

Answer 1

The usual approach for installing extensions like this is to use a feature, yes. However, you won't be using any specialized XML as this kind of extension is not catered for explicitly. So how can you do it? By using an essentially empty feature project that contains an Event Receiver assembly. The event receiver assembly is called automatically by sharepoint for 4 different events: install, uninstall, activate and deactivate. I suggest you hook the install and uninstall events to deploy your provider.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb862634.aspx

Make sense?

-Oisin

Answer 2

You can deploy a custom membership provider under minimal trust in SharePoint 2007 using Code Access Security (CAS).

Altough the author seems to not recommend using the GAC since some Sharepoint installations are on a hosted environment and you can play with GAC.

It is often easier to install the membership provider DLL in the Global Assembly Cache to achieve full trust, but in cases where you're working with a hosted SharePoint site and cannot deploy to the GAC these instructions should steer you right.

The detailed article is here. I hope it helps.

Answer 3

The Windows Live Authentication feature of the Community Kit for Sharepoint provides a nice example (with source code) of creating a solution package with a custom authentication provider. A solution package can be deployed to all servers in the farm without manually touching them