URL Mapper Relationship with the SSO Gateway

Owned by Chris Franz (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jul 20, 2020
1 min read

Since the majority of the SSO Gateway (GW) urls are long and complicated, for example:

https://sso.pilot.cccmypath.org/simplesaml/saml2/idp/SSOService.php?source=MIS111&spentityid=https://login.pilot.cccmypath.org/f/&RelayState=https://admin.pilot.ccctechcenter.org/auth

a Node-based URL Mapper, aka TinyURL, application was written to provide simpler, shorter URLs for the colleges use.  For example, using a URL mapper configuration, the URL above can be simplified to:

http://butte.pilot.openccc.net/mypath

where "butte" corresponds to the MIS111 "source" parameter and "mypath" refers to the other complex parameters in the long URL above. The URL mapper expands the smaller URL and redirects the user's browser to the longer SSO GW URL above.

Due to this relationship, if a new MIS code is added to the SSO GW (rare), the URL mapper needs a corresponding update.  Additionally, if new endpoints are added behind the SSO GW, a new configuration entry in the URL mapper can be added.  For example, "exlibris" was recently added to the URL mapper configuration.