How You Implement a Customer Login Script

To develop a login-parameters integration, you must embed code within your login script to format a URL that passes data from your external validation source to the customer portal.

The embedded code can be written in any scripting language, including PHP, JSP, or ASP. The login parameters from the external validation source must be placed in the customer portal URL and must be encoded using Base 64 encoding. In addition to using the Base 64 function, certain characters must also be replaced in the URL (+ becomes _, / becomes ~, and = becomes *).

Note: You must use a login script for every link from your website to the customer portal. If contacts exit the customer portal and re-enter later in their session, they are not automatically logged in. Therefore, we recommend that all links to the customer portal contain pass-through data.

URLs use this format: http://your_domain/ci/pta/login/redirect/answers/list/p_li/encoded_login_parameters

Note: You can replace answers/list with any customer portal page (for example, home), or use the p_next_page parameter to return customers to their original customer portal page.

The PTA controller accepts the p_li encrypted password parameter with either a GET or POST request. The POST parameter is checked only if p_li is not part of the URI (uniform resource identifier).

The parameters that can be passed to the customer portal are detailed in the table. Each parameter represents the associated field in the contacts table of the Oracle database. For additional parameters that can be passed to the customer portal, see Additional Parameters.

Table 1. Parameter-Field Associations

Parameter	Field in contacts table	Notes
p_userid	login	This parameter is required to log in and create a contact record. It cannot be updated with pass-through authentication.
p_passwd	password	This parameter is required to log in and create a contact record or log in as an existing contact. It cannot be updated through pass-through authentication. The value can be null. This parameter is ignored when the PTA_IGNORE_CONTACT_PASSWORD configuration setting is enabled. See How You Enable Dual-Mode Login.
p_email.addr	email	This parameter is required to log in and create a contact record. Its value must be unique.
p_title	title
p_name.first	first_name
p_name.last	last_name
p_alt_name.first	alt_first_name
p_alt_name.last	alt_last_name
p_email_alt1.addr	email_alt1
p_email_alt2.addr	email_alt2
p_addr.street	street
p_addr.city	city
p_addr.postal_code	postal_code	This parameter must not contain special characters. (For example, 59715-1111 should be passed as 597151111.)
p_addr.country_id	country_id	This parameter must be passed as a country’s ID number. See How You Find Code Numbers and Report IDs.
p_addr.prov_id	prov_id	This parameter must be passed as a state or province’s ID number. See How You Find Code Numbers and Report IDs.
p_ph_office	ph_office
p_ph_mobile	ph_mobile
p_ph_fax	ph_fax
p_ph_asst	ph_asst
p_ph_home	ph_home