You are reading the documentation for a web application that provides a minimum viable demo and API walk-through for Mozilla Persona.
The app allows you to sign in and sign out (using Persona) and remembers if you're logged in. That's it. This is why it's a "minimum viable demo": it does the minimum amount of work necessary to demonstrate the usage of the Persona API. The focus is on explaining how to use Persona as a developer.
Mozilla Persona is a cross-browser single-sign-on system. For users, it envisions a future with no site-specific passwords, since it allows you to log in to any site (that implements Persona) with just one password. For developers, it is a solution that eliminates all the headaches and traps that come with implementing authentication yourself: email verification, password recovery, and, most importantly, security. If your site implements Persona, you won't have to do any of those things yourself. Plus, you will be providing a better user experience for your visitors.
The other thing to know about Persona is that it's made by Mozilla, is completely free, and is entirely open-source. If you use Persona, you're never tied to a particular vendor or implementation.
To implement Persona, you don't really need to understand how it works, so this question is beyond the scope of this demo. If you're interested, a half-finished article I wrote addresses this exact question. I would also recommend reading the Persona documentation — specifically, the Protocol Overview.
The demo is an extremely minimalistic application that consists of one page that lets you log in and log out. The source code is split into two major parts.
You can get the demo from Github:
git clone git://github.com/nmalkin/persona-demo.gitFor readability and consistency, both the client and the server are written in
literate CoffeeScript.
Literate programming
is an approach to programming that intersperses code in a narrative that
explains it. CoffeeScript is a language that compiles into JavaScript.
If you haven't used it before, you'll probably want to check out its
documentation or, better yet, look at the compiled JavaScript, which
you'll find
in the app directory.
The app is already compiled for you, but if you want to recompile it,
you can run make app. (You will need CoffeeScript installed.)
The documentation for the demo is generated by Docco.
If you'd like to re-generate it, run make docs.
To run the server, make sure you have node.js, then run:
make runThe server will run, by default, on http://127.0.0.1:8080.
Helpful resources for developing with Persona include: