SINP is a protocol based on HTTP(S) and XML that provides you with an identity on the web. You register a so called SINP Identity on a SINP Server of your choice. To address a certain identity, we use an email like notation: bas@w-nz.com is the SINP Identity of the user bas on the SINP Server w-nz.com.
The first big feature of SINP is authentication. If someone claims to be bram@w-nz.com, I can check that by asking w-nz.com to check it. I’ll redirect that guy to w-nz.com to let him be checked by his proclaimed SINP Server. If he really is bram@w-nz.com, he’ll have a nice session cookie for w-nz.com and w-nz.com will check that. After that w-nz.com will redirect him back and I’ll ask w-nz.com whether he succeeded.
One major application of this authentication is that someone who posts a blog comment as noud@w-nz.com, really is/are the same guy(s) that posted before as noud@w-nz.com, for they are allowed by w-nz.com.
The second big feature of SINP is that each identity comes bundled with a XML document, which can store information about the owner like his name, email address, date of birth, etc. The SINP Server stores this document. The identity owner, the guy who owns the identity, can pick an access policy for each little bit of information in this document. You might want to share your real address only to those who you’ve explicitly allowed. Everyone can see the parts of your document you’ve allowed everyone access to. This is the one for bas@w-nz.com.
To get specific parts instead of the whole thing, or get to stuff you’ve limited access to, one needs to use SINP Negotiation. To get some specific information from noud@w-nz.com, I ask w-nz.com for this specific information, in the form of a few xpaths. Along with the xpaths I can send my own SINP address, bas@w-nz.com. The server will respond on each request according to the access policy which the SINP Server has set. There are several possibilities:
- Ok, the requested information will be included in the response.
- Nope, you’re denied access to that.
- Not found, that stuff isn’t in this document.
- You’ll have to ask Noud. Basically you’ll have to redirect Noud to the server, where he will be authenticated and after that he can decide whether to allow you access to it, and you can try again lateron.
- If you’re
bas@w-nz.com, you can see it. You’ll have to authenticate, though. This is done via sinp authentication as described before.
Another big feature of SINP is versioning, which allows caching. The version of a specific bit of information is send back on each response in negotiation. In a negotation request, I can specify the current version I already have. In case that specific part of the document hasn’t updated, the SINP server will let me know, instead of sending the whole thing.
One advantage of caching and negotation is that information can be kept synchronized with your document when it updates. A blog, on which you’ve posted a comment, might periodically check whether the information it retreived from your SINP document has changed. This can be done cheaply with negotiation and versioning.
SINP is easy to implement, it is quite simple. It also is portable, it uses widely supported technologies like XML and HTTP(S) as its base.
SINP is under development, but you can already (and really should) take a look to:
- The latest specification
- An almost complete SINP Server implementation in PHP. Notice that it’s a subversion repository.
- A proof of concept SINP client written in PHP. (subversion over http!)
- The w-nz.com SINP server, you can register your own SINP identity, now!
- A hacked wordpress blog to allow you to post comments with your SINP address, as a proof of concept.
- The kind people who hosted the project and who even awarded us a price for the project :-).
SINP is based on things I’ve seen floating around on the web, for instance Zef`s SPTP.
At the moment of writing we’re developing a PHP client, a Python client and continueing development of the PHP server. You’re welcome to participate!
We hope you like it, comments or any other forms of participation would be very welcome.
Bas, Bram and Noud.
I registered for a test account and that went fine, but now I can upload an identity document? What does such a document look like? Is it in the spec? Either way it’s not very convenient to have to upload some kind of document. I prefer typing info in some form or something.
I tried to post on the test blog but got a bunch of errors:
——–
Warning: SimpleXMLElement::__construct() [function.SimpleXMLElement—construct]: Entity: line 2: parser error : Extra content at the end of the document in /home/deliverance/wordpress/clientsinplib.php on line 74
[snip]
Well, basically the SINP server doesn’t like that you haven’t uploaded a document.
There is no specification for the document yet. The wordpress blog uses all of the following nodes in the following example document which you could use:
When the SINP Server and Client are stable I’ll add a nice wizard like thing to the server to generate a document without ever having to think about XML or uploading. I’ll first fix that it doesn’t like an empty document.
Interesting developments Bas and Crew – will follow this closely.
whoehoe!