Making authentication easier with a new built-in user menu, login and logout pages

In cases you need users accessing Orbeon Forms to be authenticated, if you decide to have that authentication done by your web container, the latter needs to be configured with:

• A login page, where users enter their username and password, which is then checked by the web container before it lets users through to Orbeon Forms.
• A logout page, which, as you might expect, logs users out by invalidating their web container session, and tells users they have been successfully logged out.

You can create your own login and logout pages, but since version 2018.2, you can also use the built-in login and logout pages provided by Orbeon Forms, making the authentication setup with Orbeon Forms simpler.

Also since version 2018.2, Orbeon Forms provides a user menu you can show in the navigation bar, allowing users to login, logout, and register. The user menu is configurable:

• You can decide whether you want the menu to show.
• You can decide what entries are shown by the menu. For instance, you might want to have Login and Logout, but not Register.
• For each menu entry, you can configure where users are taken when they select that entry. Out-of-the-box Login and Logout entries take users to the built-in pages discussed earlier, but you can configure the menu to take users to other pages should you already have your own login/logout pages.

For more on this, see Login & Logout.