Drupal Custom Login by Role

Question

I have a cURL PHP script which is able to validate a username/password against the external source.

What is the best way to integrate this as a login requirement for (select) users in Drupal?

The idea would be to add the external authentication as a login requirement for a role.

Answer 1

The preferred way would probably be to write a little module that implements hook_user for $op=="login"...that allows you to perform any logic you want to whenever a user attempts to log in.

Alternatively, could you set up LDAP? The Drupal LDAP module is pretty nice.