OpenId and Joomla 1.5.1

I don’t often write about OpenId, although its something I love and have a lot of experience with

It appears that Joomla 1.5.1 has problems with OpenId authentication, well not really, the OpenId authentication is not the problem, the problem is in Joomla core.

We have tested SVN revision 10044, and the following problems were identified:

• The RegEx for a Username does not allow a hyphen in the username - meaning an OpenId of www.phil-taylor.com would be invalid. This is because Joomla uses the OpenId Url as the username.
• The frontend login module, html element for the login areas “username” field was inconsistant with the Javascript that powers the OpenId switcher
• The backend admin login module, The html element for the login areas “username” field was not the same for the frontend and the admin login - causing confusion in openid.js
• The “Save” in user manager fell over with the hyphen as well.
• The login page, when viewed through the com_user component did not allow/display OpenId login option because of JS issue again.

Well I have fixed all these problems today - and I am providing this patch file (OpenId Patch for Joomla 1.5.1 SVN rev10044) to anyone who wishes to get OpenId working. Remember it was developed on SVN Rev 10044 and may not work on earlier revisions, although it is easy to manually view the patch file and apply the differences.

Maybe someone from the core team would like to get this patch reviewed by the JBS? and applied to the core.

Discussion on this can happen at this forum thread on joomla.org

So what am I left with after this path?

• I can now login to the front end of Joomla 1.5.x SVN rev 10044 with my OpenId of “www.phil-taylor.com” using the login module or com_user component
• I get auto registered as a “Registered” User, with my real name provided by my OpenId profile
• I can login to admin (using normal credentials) and promote this openid user to a superadmin
• I can now login to the backend end of Joomla 1.5.x SVN rev 10044 with my OpenId of “www.phil-taylor.com”

Cool eh? I think so!