Solar has a pretty easy to use Auth bootstrapping system that allows easy setup but by default its restricted to a single Auth method.

What if you want to use multiple methods? OpenID? Facebook Connect? Saml? or one of the other dozen+ solutions that you might use.. What to do? One thing to keep in mind, Auth happens really early in the bootstrapping process so things like SQL may not be available yet unless you specifically loaded it in the config.. Then you need to load the proper auth module and call it as needed..

The below code is a short example so you can see how this might work.

Sending email using the Solar Framework is not only extremely simple but very flexible as well. Solar splits the process of sending email into 2 logical parts, creating the message "package" and sending the "package"

Solar_Config is a great configuration system but at times you find yourself wanting more, by itself Solar_Config has a few weaknesses.

1. All the config is file based, changes to the config require a push.

2. If you store client config in Solar_Config files this makes #1 even worse

3. On a large site only small portions of the config may be used at once, why load it all into memory.

You have a couple options, each have highs and lows related to how they work

To understand how and were you can inject new config you have to understand how its loaded.

In your Solar.config.php

Your using Solar and decide you need OpenID support but Solar doesn't have an Adapter for that! What are you to do!

Solar makes heavy use of Adapter based classes, Solar_Auth is one of these. This makes adding additional methods pretty easy and allows you to borrow from other Frameworks without having to Hack in a third party auth setup, You can use the basics provided by Solar.

While the subject might sound dark and scary the reality is the Solar Frameworks config system is one of the things that I truly enjoy about Solar 99% of the time.

Its that other 1% you need to be aware of to keep yourself out of the rabbit hole.