1. Registering an OIDC client

Version 10.1 by messines on 2021/11/15 14:39

Must read before starting

It's very important to choose the right type of clients and to understand the various OAuth flows.

A very good documentation is this one :

https://auth0.com/docs/authorization/which-oauth-2-0-flow-should-i-use

and another one

https://dzone.com/articles/the-right-flow-for-the-job-which-oauth-20-flow-sho

Creating your OpenID Connect client

The steps to create an OpenID Connect (OIDC) client are the following:

  1. Ask the developer accreditation to be authorize to create client
  2. get an access token from the `developer` client
  3. save your registration access token for further modifications of your client
  4. use the token to call the create endpoint

Easiest way to create a client

A live exemple of client ID creation is available here on our lab, you can perfectly use this notebook to create your client, the next steps in this documentation reproduce the content of the notebook. The easiest solution as a user is to use this notebook to create a client and avoid human error while executing curl request manually.

https://lab.ebrains.eu/user/user-redirect/lab/tree/shared/Collaboratory%20Community%20Apps/Managing%20an%20OpenID%20Connect%20client.ipynb

Ask for developer accreditation

To be authorize to create an OIDC client you have to be accredited as developer.

Please go on this page and "Request to join" the group https://wiki.ebrains.eu/bin/view/Identity/#/groups/app-collaboratory-iam--service-providers

We will quickly process your request and you will be able to create an OIDC client

Fetching your developer access token

Getting your developer token is done in one simple step: authenticate against the developer client with the password grant.

This can be achieved with this sample shell script:

# Gather username and password from user
read    -p 'Enter your username: ' clb_dev_username
read -s -p 'Enter your password: ' clb_dev_pwd

# Fetch the token
curl -X POST https://iam.ebrains.eu/auth/realms/hbp/protocol/openid-connect/token \
 -u developer: \
 -d 'grant_type=password' \
 --data-urlencode "username=${clb_dev_username}" \
 --data-urlencode "password=${clb_dev_pwd}" |

# and pretty-print the JSON response
json_pp

# Erase the credentials from local variables
clb_dev_pwd=''; clb_dev_username=''

The response will be similar to:

{
   "access_token": "eyJhbGci...",
   "expires_in": 108000,
   "refresh_expires_in": 14400,
   "refresh_token": "eyJhbGci...",
   "token_type": "bearer",
   "not-before-policy": 1563261088,
   "session_state": "0ac3dfcd-aa5e-42eb-b333-2f73496b81f8",
   "scope": ""
}

Store a copy of the "access_token" value. You will need if for the next step.

Creating the client

You can now create clients by sending a JSON representation to a specific endpoint:

# Set your developer token
clb_dev_token="eyJhbGci..."

# Send the creation request
curl -X POST https://iam.ebrains.eu/auth/realms/hbp/clients-registrations/default/ \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer ${clb_dev_token}" \
 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 -d '{ "clientId": "your_client_id",
        "name": "Collaboratory workshop demo client edited",
        "description": "This describes what my app is for end users",
        "rootUrl": "https://example.org",
        "baseUrl": "https://example.org",
        "redirectUris": [
            "/login/*",
            "https://example.org/login/*"
        ],
        "webOrigins":["http://localhost:8080","https://example.org","+"],
        "bearerOnly": False,
        "consentRequired": True,
        "standardFlowEnabled": True,
        "implicitFlowEnabled": False,
        "directAccessGrantsEnabled": False,
        "attributes": {
            "contacts": "first.contact@example.com; second.contact@example.com"
        },
        "defaultClientScopes": ["openid","profile","email","roles"],
        "optionalClientScopes": ["team","group"]
    }'
|

# Pretty print the JSON response
json_pp;

In case of success, the endpoint will return its representation of your client:

{
  "defaultClientScopes" : [
     "web-origins",
     "roles"
   ],
  "redirectUris" : [
     "/relative/redirect/path",
     "/these/can/use/wildcards/*"
   ],
  "nodeReRegistrationTimeout" : -1,
  "rootUrl" : "https://root.url.of.my.app",
  "webOrigins" : [
     "+"
   ],
  "authenticationFlowBindingOverrides" : {},
  "baseUrl" : "/relative/path/to/its/frontpage.html",
  "description" : "This describes what my app is for end users",
  "notBefore" : 0,
  "frontchannelLogout" : false,
  "enabled" : true,
  "registrationAccessToken" : "eyJhbGciOi...",
  "consentRequired" : true,
  "fullScopeAllowed" : false,
  "clientAuthenticatorType" : "client-secret",
  "surrogateAuthRequired" : false,
  "directAccessGrantsEnabled" : false,
  "standardFlowEnabled" : true,
  "id" : "551b49a0-ec69-41af-9461-6c10fbc79a35",
  "attributes" : {
     "contacts" : "first.contact@example.com; second.contact@example.com"
   },
  "name" : "My Awesome App",
  "secret" : "your-client-secret",
  "publicClient" : false,
  "clientId" : "my-awesome-client",
  "optionalClientScopes" : [],
  "implicitFlowEnabled" : true,
  "protocol" : "openid-connect",
  "bearerOnly" : false,
  "serviceAccountsEnabled" : false
}

Among all the attributes, you should securely save:

  • your client secret ("secret" attribute): it is needed by your application to authenticate to the IAM server when making back-end calls
  • your client registration access token ("registrationAccessToken"): you will need it to authenticate when modifying your client in the future

Modifying your client

Update your client with a PUT request:

# Set your registration token and client id
clb_reg_token="eyJhbGciOi..."
clb_client_id="my-awesome-client"

# Update the client. Note that the client ID appears both in the endpoint URL and in the body of the request.
curl -X PUT https://iam.ebrains.eu/auth/realms/hbp/clients-registrations/default/${clb_client_id} \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer ${clb_reg_token}" \
 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 -d '{
        "clientId": "'
${clb_client_id}'",
        "redirectUris": [
            "/relative/redirect/path",
            "/these/can/use/wildcards/*",
            "/a/new/redirect/uri"
        ]
    }'
|

# Pretty print the JSON response
json_pp

 Note that your need to provide your client id both in the endpoint URL and within the body of the request.

⚠  Each time you modify your client, a new registration access token is generated. You need to keep track of your latest token to keep access to your client.  ⚠