Community App Developer Guide

Version 4.2 by allan on 2019/09/19 14:22

The Collaboratory is designed to be extended with applications provided by its community of users.

This guide describes how developers can contribute by creating and registering applications within the Collaboratory.

  1. Becoming a contributor
  2. Registering an application in the Catalogue
  3. Creating your OpenID Connect client
    1. Fetching your developer access token
    2. Creating the client
    3. Modifying your client

Becoming a contributor

The first step is for you to be recognised as a contributor. Contributors can register and manage applications within the Community Apps Catalogue.

To become a contributor, send an email to support@humanbrainproject.eu with a short summary of your intentions.

The support team will apply the permissions to your user and the next time you will login, your account will be upgraded with developers privileges.

Please note that, currently, only SGA2 accredited users will be automatically granted the contributor level.

Registering an application in the Catalogue

The Community Apps Catalogue is the place where collab authors look for applications to add to their collabs.

TODO: describe the steps to register an app in the Catalogue

Creating your OpenID Connect client

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

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

Fetching your developer access token

In order to get your developer token, you need to authenticate against the developer client with the password grant.

This can be achieved with this sample shell script:

# Gather username and password from user
echo '\nEnter your username' && read clb_dev_username &&
echo '\nEnter your password' && read -s clb_dev_pwd &&

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

Copy the "access_token" value, it is the one that will be needed for the next step.

Creating the client

With your developer token, you can now create clients by sending a JSON representation to a specific endpoint:

# Set your developer token
clb_dev_token=...

# Send the creation request
curl -X POST https://iam.humanbrainproject.eu/auth/realms/hbp/clients-registrations/default/ \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer ${clb_dev_token}" \
 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 -d '{
        "clientId": "my-awesome-client",
        "name": "My Awesome App",
        "description": "This describes what my app is for end users",
        "rootUrl": "https://root.url.of.my.app",
        "baseUrl": "/relative/path/to/its/frontpage.html",
        "redirectUris": [
            "/relative/redirect/path",
            "/these/can/use/wildcards/*"
        ],
        "webOrigins": ["+"],
        "bearerOnly": false,
        "consentRequired": true,
        "standardFlowEnabled": true,
        "implicitFlowEnabled": true,
        "directAccessGrantsEnabled": false,
        "attributes": {
            "contacts": "first.contact@example.com; second.contact@example.com"
        }
    }'
|

# Prettify 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) which is needed by your application to authenticate to the IAM server when making backend calls
  • your client registration access token ("registrationAccessToken")  which is the token you will need to authenticate when modifying your client in the future

Modifying your client

Updating a client is done with a PUT request:

# Set your registration token and client id
clb_reg_token=...

# Update the client
curl -X PUT https://iam.humanbrainproject.eu/auth/realms/hbp/clients-registrations/default/my-awesome-client \
 -H "Authorization: Bearer ${clb_reg_token}" \
 -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
 -d '{
        "clientId": "my-awesome-client",
        "redirectUris": [
            "/relative/redirect/path",
            "/these/can/use/wildcards/*",
            "/a/new/redirect/uri"
        ]
    }'
|

# Prettify the JSON response
json_pp;

 Note that your client id must be provided both in the endpoint URL and within the body of the request.

/!\   Each time you modify your client, a new registration access token will be generated. You need to track of your token changes in order to keep access to your client.   /!\