Extension:GoogleLogin

MediaWiki extensions manual
GoogleLogin
Release status: beta
Implementation User identity , Special page
Description Allows logging in with your Google account
Author(s) Florian Schmidt (Florianschmidtwelzowtalk)
Latest version 0.4.0-git
MediaWiki >= 1.39.0
Database changes Yes
Tables googlelogin_allowed_domains
user_google_user
License MIT License
Download
README
  • $wgGLAPIKey
  • $wgGLAllowedDomainsStrict
  • $wgGLAppId
  • $wgGLAllowedDomainsDB
  • $wgGLAuthoritativeMode
  • $wgGLSecret
  • $wgGLEnableEchoEvents
  • $wgGLAllowedDomains
  • managegooglelogin
  • managegooglelogindomains
See the version lifecycle for an compatibility overview
Quarterly downloads 62 (Ranked 80th)
Translate the GoogleLogin extension if it is available at translatewiki.net
Issues Open tasks · Report a bug

The GoogleLogin extension allows wiki users to log in with their Google account. The extension uses the Google API to request basic profile information from Google (such as the account ID, the full name and the email address).

Requirements

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To use this extension you need at least:

  • MediaWiki 1.36+
  • MySQL/MariaDB (no PostgreSQL or SQLite support)
  • PHP 7.3+
  • Google Developer Access
  • API Credentials for Webapplication (Client ID and Client Secret)
  • Ability to run composer update --no-dev

Installation

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  • Download and move the extracted GoogleLogin folder to your extensions/ directory.
    Developers and code contributors should install the extension from Git instead, using:cd extensions/
    git clone https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/extensions/GoogleLogin
  • Only when installing from Git, run Composer to install PHP dependencies, by issuing composer install --no-dev in the extension directory. (See task T173141 for potential complications.)
  • Add the following code at the bottom of your LocalSettings.php file:
    wfLoadExtension( 'GoogleLogin' );
    
  • Run the update script which will automatically create the necessary database tables that this extension needs.
  • Configure the required parameters
  • Make sure ./wiki/extensions/GoogleLogin/cache is writeable for the Webserver's user
  •   Done – Navigate to Special:Version on your wiki to verify that the extension is successfully installed.

Configuration

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The extension provides two configuration variables to set the Client ID and Client Secret (you get this pair in the Google Developer Console (see below), remove "<" and ">").

$wgGLSecret = '<your-client-secret>';
$wgGLAppId = '<your-client-id>';

Additional configuration parameters

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Configuration variable Default value Description
$wgGLAllowedDomains[gerrit 1] '' An array of mail domains, which are allowed to use with GoogleLogin, e.g. [ 'example.com' ];. Default: all domains are allowed. If set or when changed, you need to run the "updatePublicSuffixArray.php" maintenance script.
$wgGLAllowedDomainsDB[gerrit 2] false If set to true, GoogleLogin uses the database to check, if an email domain of the primary email-address of a Google account is allowed to login.
$wgGLAllowedDomainsStrict[gerrit 1] false Only observed, if $wgGLAllowedDomains is an array. If set to true, the email domain will be checked completely against the allowed domains (instead of only the TLD), e.g.:

test.example.com isn't allowed if $wgGLAllowedDomainsStrict is true and example.com is an allowed domain.
test.example.com is allowed if $wgGLAllowedDomainsStrict is false and example.com is an allowed domain.

$wgGLAPIKey[gerrit 3] '' Key for public API access. Used only for admin actions to check, if the user has a Google Plus profile or not.
$wgGLAuthoritativeMode[gerrit 4] false Controls the Authoritative mode of GoogleLogin.
$wgGLEnableEchoEvents true

Settings in Google Developer Console

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To use this extension you need a Google developer account and access to the developer console. This is a very simple step-by-step guide (see also Googles help page on this):

  1. Open Google developer console
  2. Read and accept the terms of service
  3. Create your first project
  4. Go to APIs and services
  5. Click + CREATE CREDENTIALS
  6. Select OAuth client ID
  7. Select as Web application as APPLICATION TYPE, as Authorized JavaScript origins type in your domain name (no wildcards and directories allowed!)
  8. Type in your Authorized redirect URI like this example:
    If your domain is example.com and you have installed MediaWiki in Root of your domain, the redirect URI is as follows: https://example.com/index.php/Special:GoogleLoginReturn
  9. Click create and copy the Client ID and Client Secret to the configuration variables in LocalSettings.php

Special page "Special:GoogleLoginReturn"

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The allowed redirect URI in Google developer console must be in the wiki's content language. If your wiki was set to German as the content language, then use Spezial:GoogleLoginReturn. In case you used the wrong language, all authentication requests will fail with the error code redirect uri mismatch.

Debugging

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Normally, you can see the error message on all generic error pages. Sometimes there are Internal Errors, called Exceptions. In this case, please add $wgShowExceptionDetails with value true in LocalSettings.php to see the complete Exception message. For a support request, please provide always the lines of the Exception.

Use on a private wiki

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If you have set your Wiki to private with

$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false;

you have to whitelist the "Special:GoogleLoginReturn" page, so that anonymous users can access the callback URL after being redirected from the authentication provider. You can do this by adding the following line to your LocalSettings.php:

$wgWhitelistRead = [ 'Special:GoogleLoginReturn' ];

The name of the special page must be in the wiki's content language. If your wiki was e.g. set to German as the content language, then use Spezial:Benutzerkonto_anlegen. In case you used the wrong language, all authentication requests will fail and redirect you to "Special:Login".

Administer allowed domains on-wiki

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The user interface to manage the list of allowed domains.

GoogleLogin provides a feature to restrict the login with Google to specific Email address domains (such as gmail.com, googlemail.com or every other (own) domain). This feature is especially interesting for companies, who use their own domain names with Google Apps. The list of domains, which are allowed to login with Google, are managed in an array in the LocalSettings.php (the $wgGLAllowedDomains configuration option). Since version 0.4.0, GoogleLogin also provides a way to manage the list of allowed domains on the wiki itself. The allowed domains are saved in the database when this feature is enabled and can be change (remove/add) through a graphical user interface (a special page) or through the MediaWiki API.

Note: The list of allowed domains cannot be managed in LocalSettings.php anymore, once the administration of the domains in the database is enabled.

To enable the feature to manage the allowed domains in the database, just set the $wgGLAllowedDomainsDB configuration variable to true in your LocalSettings.php. You also want to assign the new managegooglelogindomains user right to one group you're a member of (please keep in mind, that all users with this user right are allowed to change the list of allowed domains, so consider to add this right to an administrator-level group only!). An example configuration could look like:

$wgGLSecret = 'your-secret';
$wgGLAppId = 'your-app-id';
$wgGLAllowedDomainsDB = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['managegooglelogindomains'] = true;

You now need to run the update.php script again, so that the necessary database changes are applied to your database. After the update process is completed, you can navigate to the special page Special:GoogleLoginAllowedDomains on your wiki. You'll get a page where you can add new domains, which are allowed to login with their Google account and you can remove them, once they was added.

Configuration parameter "$wgGLAPIKey"

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This configuration option still exists, but it's now used for more than just the Special:ManageGoogleLogin special page. It's now used to get the name of a user on Special:RemoveCredentials to make it easier to the user to identify the correct Google account (instead of just showing the Google ID). If the key isn't correct or isn't supplied, GoogleLogin will show the Google ID only. For a good user experience, it's highly suggested to supply this api key now.

Authoritative mode

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Automatic account creation

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Google Login supports a so called authoritative mode, in which, when enabled, a user account is automatically created with the Google account, which was used to login, is not associated with a local MediaWiki account already. This option is disabled by default and needs to be enabled with a configuration option. However, please read the following important information before doing so. This feature requires that the wiki's configuration strictly supports the following:

  • GoogleLogin needs to be the only primary authentication provider, e.g. set
$wgAuthManagerConfig = [
    'primaryauth' => [
        GoogleLogin\Auth\GooglePrimaryAuthenticationProvider::class => [
            'class' => GoogleLogin\Auth\GooglePrimaryAuthenticationProvider::class,
            'sort' => 0
        ]
    ],
    'preauth' => [],
    'secondaryauth' => []
];
$wgInvalidUsernameCharacters = ':~';
$wgUserrightsInterwikiDelimiter = '~';
  • Autocreation of accounts needs to be enabled:
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['autocreateaccount'] = true;
  • The GoogleLogin authoritative mode needs to be enabled:
$wgGLAuthoritativeMode = true;

Enabling this feature also has the following influence:

  • The username of the account is the primary email field of the returned information from Google. This is not configurable.
  • If a local wiki account is already connected, this account is used to login, which means that an already existing account takes precedence over creating a new one.
  • The newly created account will automatically be linked with the Google account.
  • GoogleLogin will not let a user add or remove any further Google account connections (or the automatically created link) to prevent a user from being not able to login anymore.
  • GoogleLogin does not add a password during the account creation, if the authoritative mode is disabled and password login shall be enabled again, the user needs to reset their password.

Manual account creation

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Google Login also supports a variant of the so called authoritative mode, in which, when configured, a user account is still manually created by the respective user but automatically mapped to the Google account, which was used when creating the account, if it is not already associated with a local MediaWiki account. Moreover only permissive Google accounts can register an account manually.

  • Creation of accounts needs to be enabled (also for private wikis):
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = true;
  • If on a private wiki the following pages need to be accessible by everybody, e.g. for English language wikis:
$wgWhitelistRead = [
    'Special:Login',
    'Special:GoogleLoginReturn',
    'Special:CreateAccount',
    'Special:CreateAccount/return'
];
Note that the special pages need to be added in the wiki language.
  • The primary authentication provider needs to be disabled, i.e. set
$wgAuthManagerAutoConfig['primaryauth'] = [ ];

Enabling manual account creation has the same influence as automatic account creation does (see above), however with the following difference:

  • The user who creates the account is free in its naming, i.e. some sort of user name logic cannot be enforced.
  • If a local wiki account is already connected, an additional new account cannot be created manually, which means that an already existing account takes precedence over creating a new one.

Google API PHP Client

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This Extension uses the Google API PHP Client (included in versions before 0.2.1), distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. The Client can be downloaded from GitHub.

Maintenance script "updatePublicSuffixArray.php"

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The "updatePublicSuffixArray.php" maintenance script downloads a list of domain names which are valid to be used in the world. This is required in order for GoogleLogin to allow subdomains of a specific email domain when you have restricted the login with GoogleLogin for specific domains. This is only needed if $wgGLAllowedDomainsStrict is set to false (which is the default) and every time the setting configuration parameter $wgGLAllowedDomains was changed.

Version lifecycle

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Please note that I support only the latest version of GoogleLogin. Any versions apart from the current release (which means the current MediaWiki release branch) and the current development version (aka master) are not supported anymore.

References

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Gerrit Code review

See also

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  • OpenID Connect - Allows for authentication and authorization, including logging in with Google.