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WP SAML Auth

By Pantheon Systems

User Management & Authentication / User Registration & Login

WP SAML Auth Review - In-Depth Analysis

SAML authentication for WordPress using OneLogin or SimpleSAMLphp.

Performance Overview

WPS Score

6.42/10

User Rating

4.5/5 (based on 8+ reviews)

Active Installations

7,000+

Update Frequency

Below Average It is calculated using the weighted average of same category plugins.

Security Score

1 / 10 (Very Low Risk) It is calculated using the weighted average of all versions.

What It Does

This plugin provides SAML authentication for WordPress, leveraging the OneLogin SAML library or the optionally installed SimpleSAMLphp. It serves as a bridge between WordPress and the chosen authentication library.

Users can log in via SAML through a button added to the standard WordPress login view. When clicked, users are redirected to the identity provider for authentication. Once authenticated, they return to WordPress and are signed in. New users can be automatically created if desired.

The plugin includes configuration options to customize its behavior, such as forcing all authentication through the SAML identity provider. It supports both SimpleSAMLphp v1.x and v2.x, with automatic detection of the autoloader.

Other Notable Features

Here are a few other notable features of this free WP SAML Auth plugin.

SAML authentication

WordPress authentication

OneLogin SAML

SimpleSAMLphp

FAQ

If you’d like to make sure the user’s display name, first name, and last name are updated in WordPress when they log back in, you can use the following code snippet:

/**  * Update user attributes after a user has logged in via SAML.  */ add_action( 'wp_saml_auth_existing_user_authenticated', function( $existing_user, $attributes ) {     $user_args = array(         'ID' => $existing_user->ID,     );     foreach ( array( 'display_name', 'first_name', 'last_name' ) as $type ) {         $attribute          = \WP_SAML_Auth::get_option( "{$type}_attribute" );         $user_args[ $type ] = ! empty( $attributes[ $attribute ][0] ) ? $attributes[ $attribute ][0] : '';     }     wp_update_user( $user_args ); }, 10, 2 );

The wp_saml_auth_existing_user_authenticated action fires after the user has successfully authenticated with the SAML IdP. The code snippet then uses a pattern similar to WP SAML Auth to fetch display name, first name, and last name from the SAML response. Lastly, the code snippet updates the existing WordPress user object.

Because SimpleSAMLphp uses PHP sessions to manage user authentication, it will work unreliably or not at all on a server configuration with multiple web nodes. This is because PHP’s default session handler uses the filesystem, and each web node has a different filesystem. Fortunately, there’s a way around this.

First, install and activate the WP Native PHP Sessions plugin, which registers a database-based PHP session handler for WordPress to use.

Next, modify SimpleSAMLphp’s www/_include.php file to require wp-load.php. If you installed SimpleSAMLphp within the wp-saml-auth directory, you’d edit wp-saml-auth/simplesamlphp/www/_include.php to include:

<?php require_once dirname( dirname( dirname( dirname( dirname( dirname( __FILE__ ) ) ) ) ) ) . '/wp-load.php';

Note: the declaration does need to be at the top of _include.php, to ensure WordPress (and thus the session handling) is loaded before SimpleSAMLphp.

There is no third step. Because SimpleSAMLphp loads WordPress, which has WP Native PHP Sessions active, SimpleSAMLphp and WP SAML Auth will be able to communicate to one another on a multi web node environment.