User access integration

Can it be done ?

The simple answer is yes, all hail drupal ;)

The solution or range of possible solutions is alot more varied and complex.

To actually 'integrate' another system like phpBB, would really require a drupal module, probably per system in order for things to be used within drupal. This approach seems like a whole can of worms to me and maybe contrary to the whole drupal ethos ... either way it's not an answer - IMHO

A more simple solution is to use static pages external OR internal to drupal with an iFrame pointing to your system.

In that way you get UI integration and a unified experience for your users.

I'm having good results with this approach but it depends greatly on your theme and site setup (pure drupal or mix, clean urls, etc)...

external

We (as a web dev studio) use drupal as an internal extranet which also provides access to our web based admin systems, dotproject, phpMyAdmin, etc etc. to achieve a simple integration with drupal
I've got a static html page in the site that uses the same layout html and imagery as used in the drupal theme, with an iFrame and buttons that load the URL's to different web UI's into it.

internal

Create a static page and simply use an iFrame tag something like ...

note: I've had to remove some key characters and php tags

    iframe src="http://your.other.system/"></iframe>

Of course this doesn't cover single sign-on...
Which can be achieved by having a custom block that contains a prepopulated login form that submits on page load and a hidden or smal iframe. If it's a PHP block you can do tests for the existence of login cookies etc or output something or nothing to the users.
We use a custom db table tho to store login details for each system per user .

the contents of a custom block like this might look like ...

	if(!isset($_COOKIE\['somecookie'\])) { // force a login if the cookie doesn't exist <br />
	br />
<br />
	iframe frameborder="0" allowtransparency="yes" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" id="LoginFrame" name="LoginFrame" scrolling="no" class="blockiF_left"></iframe><br />
		form action="http://your.sytem/login" method="post" target="LoginFrame" name="LoginForm" id="LoginForm" style="display:none;"><br />
			input type="hidden" name="username" value=""><br />
			input type="hidden" name="password" value=""><br />
		</form><br />
		script language="javascript" <br />type="text/javascript">document.dpLoginForm.submit();</script><br />
<br />

<br />

To make it dynamic you'll need to do a bit of work with a db table to store your system logins, generic or per user, then use PHP to do a lookup using the global $user->uid as the lookup and populate the form with correct values at runtime.

... there may be a drupal mod to cover this or one in the pipeline :?

This kind of usage may push drupal more into the portal arena .. would a portal mod that does all this be a good idea :?

HTH

--

JT