Re: Mosaic/WWW for classes

Christian L. Mogensen (mogens@CS.Stanford.EDU)
Thu, 15 Sep 1994 18:49:34 -0700 (PDT)


> > We want to do quizes and tests. We are working on methods to
> > authenticate who the person taking the quiz is and to pass
> > that information back with the form submission to the grader.
> >
> > Do you have suggestions about how to tie the WWW authentication
> > with the submitted information in a form?

The simple way (assuming NCSA HTTPd server)

Use a .htaccess file in a cgi-bin subdirectory to require passwords
from the users - then use the returned CGI variable REMOTE_USER
to find the right mail address.

In short: in /cgi-bin/quiz
File: .htaccess

AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin/quiz/.htstudents
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName Student
AuthType Basic

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
require valid-user
</Limit>

File: .htstudents (must be set up before class starts)

student1: 12EWRJHWq!
student-two: 3Hhjdiudua
etc etc...

Then set up you quiz program in this directory - the first access
will cause a password prompt, and after that point the student logs
in and the scripts have access to the REMOTE_USER variable as a
simple 'signature' - granted the security of this setup is really
low, but should be adequate for the needs of a classroom.

Oh - you might want to check the contrib directory at NCSA for CGI
scripts to allow students to change their passwords through the web
too..

Christian "web-head"