Can't get Zotero connector proxy to work?

lasadea

Hello,

I am not super literate with proxy etc terminology so sorry in advance:
On my old macbook pro I remember logging in via my university institution to a number of journal sites (e.g. tandfonline) There was a yellow bar pop-up in my Firefox Zotero connector that said 'remember this proxy' and I was able to always be automagically logged in via institutional access on these sites.

I upgraded to a new macbook, and reinstalled Zotoero and the connector on Firefox, logged in via my institutions, and Zotero has never shown that pop-up. I'm not sure what is different this time (except my institution - just started a phd?). i have uninstalled and reinstalled the connector / restarted Firefox and still nothing changes.

Is this an error, or am I misunderstanding the proxy pop-up?

Thanks,

dstillman

You're saying this is a different university?

If the university uses EZproxy, Zotero should detect it automatically. If it uses a less-common proxy system, it might not. If you give an example of the URL of a proxied site, we should be able to tell you more. (You can x out the university name if you want.)

lasadea

Here's the final URL of a site (JSTOR) that I logged into via Institutional access, is that what you mean?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.14?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

And here's the hyperlinked URL I clicked on to get there :
https://shibbolethsp.jstor.org/start?entityID=https://xxxidp.xxx.ac.uk/idp/shibboleth&dest=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctv9hj9r9.14&site=jstor

Sorry if this isn't what you mean!

dstillman

Yeah, automatic proxy detection won't work for that. And manually creating a proxy entry wouldn't work either, since you ultimately end up on an unproxied URL, so the Zotero Connector wouldn't have any way of knowing when you needed to be redirected via the proxy login.

Do all sites use a similar pattern? A hyperlink to a Shibboleth URL on the site's domain, followed by an unmodified site URL?

adamsmith

(Using SSO like Shibboleth or Open Athens for authentication is fait common in the UK)

dstillman

I've created an issue to look into whether it'd be possible to detect and redirect to Shibboleth-protected resources. Happy to have input there from people more familiar with the technical details.