Flarum: Setup of a blog-like app

[arunge]

We need to setup a blog like app with following features:

• Administrator may create forums devoted to different topics ("Announcements"). Within these users can create their posts. Administrator can enable/disable/delete forums (the same for posts and comments)
• Within a forum ("Announcements"), users registered in Pandora (&ORCID) can create a new post ("Reply to discussion") with standard inputs (title and main text). When displaying these posts show title, main text, post time, name, and email.
• Users may post comments on posts (or on other comments) with the same items as above being displayed.
• Include a list of forums and search options for forums and posts.

Additionally, we need

• Must have: require users of the forum to log in using a specific authentication method: ckan (SAML2), ORCID (OAuth)
• setup should be quite fast/simple

@SarahWagner as just discussed, please check the following tools for setting up a forum on our servers.

• Flarum
  • free version
  • looks like little effort for setup
  • is there an extension
  • for ckan (SAML2)?
  • for ORCID (OAuth)?
  • of not, would it be difficult to develop one?
  • what do we need for setup on our servers?
• Discourse
  • seems not to have a free version?
  • are there SAML2 or OAuth extensions?
• and there are free, open-source software phpBB and MyBB

Please let me know, which of the options you would prefer or if you would like to suggest an alternative tool!

@jan-abel-inwt also mentioned that there might be options using quarto, however applying solutions from above seems to be less effort for me. Please, let me know your thoughts on that.

[SarahWagner]

Discourse

• SAML:

⚠ Discourse has successfully integrated with SAML for many enterprises, but SAML integration is often complex, error prone, and typically requires customization / changes for that organization's specific implementation of SAML. This work is best undertaken by software developers familiar with Discourse. We are highly familiar with Discourse, and available to do that work on an enterprise hosting plan. (https://github.com/discourse/discourse-saml)

• OAuth: https://github.com/discourse/discourse-oauth2-basic
• Hosting: via Enterprise Plan (Costs: Contact Sales) or Self-Hosting

Flarum:

• SAML: no
• OAuth: yes, ORCID is no default, but it seems it can be added: https://flarum.org/extension/fof/oauth
• Hosting: via Flarum Flexible Plan (Costs: starting at 50€ per month) or Self-Hosting

Wordpress [general]:

• SAML: yes, I didn't find anything on ckan, but the readme of this Plugin says "WordPress SAML SSO Plugin can enable WP SSO with any SAML 2.0 compliant Identity Provider"
• OAuth: yes https://wordpress.com/plugins/miniorange-login-with-eve-online-google-facebook
• in Business Plan these two plugins would be free: https://wordpress.com/pricing/
• Self-Hosting is also an option (licences for the two plugins cost each 349$ per instance)

Wordpress Forum Plugins:

• bbpress
• WPForo

[arunge]

@SarahWagner the choice was made for the free version of Flarum. For now, we will integrate OAuth (ORCID). We must discuss if developing an extension for SAML2 is an option for a follow-up task.

[SarahWagner]

Ich habe einfach die Setup Punkte in https://freeflarum.com/ unter "Create My Flarum Forum" testweise durchgespielt. Als Template habe ich "Discussion" genommen. Wir müssen selbst nichts aufsetzen, danach ist das Forum erreichbar unter https://<name>.freeflarum.com/. Das hier ist mein Test-Forum: https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/

Geht man (oben rechts) auf admin > Administration gelangt man direkt zum Dashboard wo man sich die Features zusammenklicken kann. Ich habe schon mal "Blog" hinzugefügt. Ich sehe dort außerdem die Features "OAuth Center" und "SSO". Im Forum habe ich eine Discussion und einen Blogpost hinzugefügt.

@arunge Für Demonstrationszwecke lasse ich mein Testforum mal laufen. Lass mich wissen, wenn ich es wieder löschen kann.

Der Name des Forums kann im Nachhinein nicht geändert werden (Titel usw. schon, aber die oben genannte URL bleibt fix).

[SarahWagner]

@arunge Es gibt eine API, auch für die free Version, um die Blogposts und Diskussionen zu ziehen.

https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/api https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/api/discussions

Wenn wir später OAuth nutzen, wird der Zugriff auf die API auch nur noch mit OAuth funktionieren.

[arunge]

@isomemo In summary, we tested the free version of Flarum:

• our test forum is running at Flarum: https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/
• we can reach an API to get the content of blog posts:
  • https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/api
  • https://sawflarum.freeflarum.com/api/discussions

Before we can proceed to setup OAuth (ORCID) we need:

• [ ] the name for the new forum
• [ ] an email address that will have admin access

Please provide us above! We can also discuss this in our next meeting!

[isomemo]

@arunge looks like a good option!

[arunge]

@SarahWagner We can use

• "Pandora-Isomemo" as the name for the new forum
• for now, one of our e-mail addresses as long as we develop/test the forum

Please let us shortly discuss the next steps, when you have some time

[SarahWagner]

I created a new free forum https://pandoraisomemo.freeflarum.com/. The blog is also enabled. @arunge you should have a mail, I created an account for you and made you admin as well. I also enabled the OAuth Plugin (https://pandoraisomemo.freeflarum.com/admin#/extension/fof-oauth), @arunge, will you takeover from here and take a look at the login process?

[arunge]

I checked the options that we do have with the free version of Flarum on https://pandoraisomemo.freeflarum.com/:

Default permissions:

Login with extension

• since we use a hosted environment

  • we can only use the extensions from the Admin dashboard
  • we cannot locally install addons for extensions

• it is possible to close "sign up" which in essence restricts the login to existing users or to allowed providers that can be used for login

• the extension FoF OAuth allows OAuth integration

  • but OAuth integration is restricted to several providers in our hosted environment: currently Discord, Facebook, GitHub, GitLab, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn
  • in order to check the OAuth integration, I added GitHub login which is working without issues
  • integration of additional providers is possible only with an extender that must be installed

• the extension FoF Passport allows to integrate Laravel Passport-compatible OAuth2 services

  • but ORCiD is not a Laravel installation
  • I tried to use ORCiD with the FoF Passport extension: Although a first step of authorization seems to work, the extension cannot handle the format that is returned by ORCiD which gives an error

• [ ] first, I will discuss internally options that could solve the issue

  • ~is there a technical solution to add the login before one can reach the forum? Than we could keep the hosted setup~
  • [ ] if not, is there the option
  • to open a pull request at https://github.com/FriendsOfFlarum/oauth that adds ORCiD access and to ask if the developers could add the option for ORCiD to their extension, or
  • to develop a separate extension solely for ORCiD such as there is one for spotify (https://github.com/datlechin/flarum-oauth-spotify) which is available in the Admin dashboard
  • check forum for help: https://discuss.flarum.org/t/extensibility
  • [ ] if not, estimate the requirements and the effort for a local installation

• [ ] then, we need to decide which way to go

---

Links to Flarum's passport-docu:

• https://github.com/FriendsOfFlarum/passport

Links to ORCiD- docu:

• https://info.orcid.org/documentation/api-tutorials/api-tutorial-get-and-authenticated-orcid-id/#h-get-some-client-credentials
• https://github.com/ORCID/ORCID-Source/blob/main/orcid-web/ORCID_AUTH_WITH_OPENID_CONNECT.md
• https://info.orcid.org/documentation/integration-and-api-faq/
• https://orcid.org/.well-known/openid-configuration

[arunge]

@isomemo To summarize our findings:

Following features are available on our FreeFlarum forum (https://pandoraisomemo.freeflarum.com/) after setting the desired permissions (compare https://github.com/Pandora-IsoMemo/drat/issues/41#issuecomment-2354799558)

• [x] Administrator may create forums devoted to different topics ("Announcements"). Within these users can create their posts. Administrator can enable/disable/delete forums (the same for posts and comments)
• [x] Within a forum ("Announcements"), ~users registered in Pandora (&ORCID)~ can create a new post ("Reply to discussion") with standard inputs (title and main text). When displaying these posts show title, main text, post time, name, and ~email~.
• [x] Users may post comments on posts (or on other comments) with the same items as above being displayed.
• [x] Include a list of forums and search options for forums and posts.

Additionally, we have following advantages

• FreeFlarum is hosted externally: no maintenance of local database or local flarum setup
• we can reach the API easily: https://pandoraisomemo.freeflarum.com/api/discussions
  • calling the API is only possible when being logged into the forum

On the other hand,

• the attempt to set up login with ORCiD (OAuth login) failed (the free extension "FoF Passport" returns an error during login)
• the market place for FreeFlarum does not offer an extension for SAML2 login (for CKAN portals SSO with SAML2 can be added)
  • additionally, it is not clear at the moment if SSO with SAML2 is available for Pandora
  • No documentation found on that on Pandora
  • Was the extension for SSO with SAML2 added to the Pandora installation? @isomemo Do you know whom we could ask to find out?

If Pandorra has the SSO with SAML2 extension we could request an extension on FreeFlarum. However, the guidelines for an extension request are very strict and one point seems to be an issue:

Extension Inclusion Criteria

1. Premium (paid) extensions are not eligible for inclusion on FreeFlarum.

It looks like there is already an extension for SAML2 SSO for Flarum (available for the paid version of Flarum)

• https://flarum.org/extension/askvortsov/flarum-saml
• https://discuss.flarum.org/d/22757-flarum-saml
• https://github.com/askvortsov1/flarum-saml

So, asking for adding this feature to FreeFlarum seems not to be possible.

@isomemo We will stop here. Please let us know

• if you have ideas on how to continue here or
• if we should just use the ready forum as it is and e.g. link it to our github site or to the Pandora & IsoMemo website.