Using PHP and cURL you can easily authenticate users using NetClassroom.

 You will have to create a login page with a form that contains username and password fields, and then post it to the file below:

 We have NetClassroom running in HTTPS on IIS, if you dont (you should) remove the following line:   

 curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);

 The script takes the username and password and then using cURL sends it to the NetClassroom login.aspx page where it scrapes the authentication information from the cookie. Because the way NC was designed you can not scrape any information off of the NC pages (they use javascript for everything) but we can authenticate users securely.

A successfull login will say: Sucessfull Login!

A failed login will say: Login Failed

Due to posting limitations here I had to modify the $viewstate variable - it should be on ONE line.

<?
$username = urlencode($HTTP_POST_VARS['username']);
$password = urlencode($HTTP_POST_VARS['password']);

session_start();
$useragent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1";
$file = tempnam('/tmp', 'netclass');
$viewstate = urlencode("/wEPDwUKMTU0MTYwMzU4NA9kFggCAw8WAh4JaW5uZXJodG1
sBUQ8aW1nIHNyYz0nLi4vaW1hZ2VzL25jbG9naW4uZ2lmJyBib3JkZXI9JzAnIFdJRFRIPScyNTAnIEhFSUdIVD0
nMjknPmQCBQ8PFgIeBFRleHQFZVBsZWFzZSBlbnRlciB5b3VyIFVzZXIgSUQgYW5kIFBhc3N3b3JkPGJyPnRvIGFjY2
VzcyBOZXRDbGFzc3Jvb20uIFByZXNzIHRoZSBMb2dpbiBidXR0b24gdG8gY29udGludWUuZGQCCQ8
PFgIfAQVoPGI+VXJzdWxpbmUgQWNhZGVteTwvYj48QlI+MzQxIFNvdXRoIFNhcHBpbmd0b24gUm9hZDxCUj5
TYWludCBMb3VpcyZuYnNwO01PJm5ic3A7NjMxMjI8QlI+KDMxNCkgOTg0LTI4MDBkZAILDw8WAh8BBWU8
QSBIUkVGPSdodHRwOi8vd3d3LmJsYWNrYmF1ZC5jb20nIHRhcmdldD0nX3RvcCc+wqkxOTk3LTIwMDggQmxhY2
tiYXVkLCBJbmMuIEFsbCByaWdodHMgcmVzZXJ2ZWQuPC9hPmRkZElubcQD6l6US/YZDvUEFRl9G53R");

   $curl = curl_init();
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $useragent);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_URL, "https://netclassroom.yourdomain.com:10443/NetClassroom7/Forms/login.aspx");
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_VERBOSE, false); // Display communication with server
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, $file);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, $file);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "btnLogin=Login&sid=".$username."&pin=".$password."&__VIEWSTATE=".$viewstate);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
   curl_setopt($curl, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);

$store = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);

 $handle = fopen($file, "r");
 $contents = fread($handle, filesize($file));
if (preg_match("/\.ASPXFORMSAUTH/", $contents, $matches)) {
  echo "Sucessfull Login! <br />";
  $_SESSION['student'] = 1;

}
else { echo "Login Failed";}
fclose($handle);
        if(file_exists("$file"))
        {
        unlink("$file");
        }

?>

This is exactly what I want to do. I'm not sure how to get the form I've created to talk to the NetClassroom login page - I am a bit of a novice on web authentication. Can you give me a little more detail on the setup? That would be MUCH appreciated!

Yeah - I actually have an updated PHP script that will regex out the "viewstate" from the ASPX, so you dont have to update it manually everytime you update your NC software.

Shoot me an email - dbaker [at] ursulinestl.org

I will post everything on here once I get it cleaned up :)