This page is intended for use by institutional IT or library staff who want to create "WAYF-less" links to UK Federation-authenticated EDINA resources (e.g., from a library portal).
A WAYF-less link is a specially constructed link to a federation-authenticated resource. It enables the user to go directly to a nominated identity provider, bypassing the usual discovery process (the WAYF). Such links, embedded for example in a library portal, can simplify the user experience when accessing federation resources. A document by Simon McLeish of LSE describes how such links can be constructed in general:
https://gabriel.lse.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Projects/WayfLess
This page describes the specific format of WAYF-less links for EDINA resources.
Notes:
1. The specific links used are not guaranteed to remain unchanged over time, although we will avoid changing them without good reason.
2. WAYF-less links bypass the normal EDINA login pages, which also inform users of outages, planned downtime, service enhancements, etc. Institutions planning to use WAYF-less links to EDINA services should therefore make alternative arrangements for keeping their users up to date with this information.
3. In each of the link formats below, replace "xxx" by the entityID of the identity provider to be used. For example, the entityID for Edinburgh University's IdP is:
https://idp.ed.ac.uk/shibboleth
The entityID for the SDSS IdP is:
urn:mace:ac.uk:sdss.ac.uk:provider:identity:sdss.ac.uk
4. All query parameters should be URL encoded. For clarity, this is not shown in the examples below.
The general form for Digimap is:
https://geoshibb.edina.ac.uk/Shibboleth.sso/WAYF/UKFederation?providerId=xxx
The following services all use the same form of WAYF-less URL:
| Short Name | Service |
|---|---|
| eig | Education Image Gallery |
| emol | Film and Sound Online |
| times-index | Index to the Times |
| statacc | Statistical Accounts of Scotland |
A WAYF-less URL for these services has this format, where "sss" is replaced by the (case-sensitive) short name from the table above:
https://target.sdss.ac.uk/sss/Shibboleth.sso/WAYF/UKFederation?providerId=xxx
The following services use a similar format with a different domain:
| Short Name | Service |
|---|---|
| agcensus | Agricultural Census data |
| gogeo | Go-Geo! |
| nfo | NewsFilm Online |
https://sp.edina.ac.uk/sss/Shibboleth.sso/WAYF/UKFederation?providerId=xxx
Three services (Jorum, CAB Abstracts and Land, Life and Leisure) use the general form described in the LSE document, as shown below before URL encoding:
SSO_LOCATION?target=RESOURCE_LOCATION& shire=https://ledi.edina.ac.uk:8885/Shibboleth.sso/SAML/POST& providerId=PROV_ID
The target (RESOURCE_LOCATION) before URL encoding is:
The providerId (PROV_ID) before URL encoding is:
The SDSS IdP's SSO_LOCATION (taken from the federation metadata) is https://origin.sdss.ac.uk/shibboleth-idp/SSO, so a complete WAYF-less URL (before URL encoding) for Land, Life and Leisure for that IdP would be:
https://origin.sdss.ac.uk/shibboleth-idp/SSO?target=https://ledi.edina.ac.uk:8885/landlifeleisure/landlifeleisurelogin-sso&shire=https://ledi.edina.ac.uk:8885/Shibboleth.sso/SAML/POST&providerId=urn:mace:ac.uk:sdss.ac.uk:provider:service:nevis.ed.ac.uk
It can be readily seen that these URLs are more fragile, and more likely to change over time, than the others.