Designing a web UI for a legacy password manager
Barcelona Perl Workshop 2014
by Alex Muntada / @alexmuntada
Meet the legacy system
shellscript passwd db passwd
+-----------+ +--------------+ +----------+
| SP client | <=> | SinglePasswd | <=> | SP agent |
+-----------+ +--------------+ +----------+
SP authentication
$ passwd
You will be prompted for two different passwords:
- Your authentication password.
- Your new password for a service group of your choice.
Enter 'alexm' authentication password:
Authenticating user 'alexm'... Successful
SP service list
Service group list for user 'alexm':
[1] Gateway: Access to internal services from outside (home, etc.)
- Gateway Account
- VPN
- ...
[2] Internal: Intranet, UNIX account, E-mail account, etc.
- Authentication
- Home Page
- Intranet
- Mail Account
- ...
[3] Other: CVS repositories, Mailing lists, etc.
- Mail List [mhonarc-test]
- ...
Enter your choice [1..3, L=list, Q=quit]:
SP password change
Enter your choice [1..3, L=list, Q=quit]: 2
Enter 'alexm' new password for 'Internal' (8 chars):
Re-enter 'alexm' password for 'Internal':
Changing 'alexm' passwords for service group 'Internal'
This may take a long while, please be patient...
Password successfully changed in database
...
Adding the web UI
internet public internal
+---------+ +-------+ +---------+
| browser | <=> | nginx | <=> | apache |
+---------+ +-------+ +---------+
^
|
v
+--------------+
| SinglePasswd |
+--------------+
^ ^
| ... |
v v
+----------+ +----------+
| SP agent | | SP agent |
+----------+ +----------+
The web client
Web UI authentication
Web UI service list
Web UI passord change
Wait, there is more...
Adding password reset
More details next time.
Final thoughts
- Designing an API for legacy software isn't that hard.
- Adding new features becomes possible instantly.
- Using APIs you can replace legacy software smoothly.
- REST APIs are cool and help make cool web UIs.
- Mojolicious makes this task even cooler!
¿Questions?
by Alex Muntada / @alexmuntada