Enable SSO and Granular Access Control For A Header-Based Web App with Keycloak

Preview

In this tutorial, we will use the DAB to enable SSO and granular access control for a header-based web App. The IdP we will use is Keycloak. We will use DAB's side deployment mode, which means DAB and this app are running on the same server.

• The application will run on localhost:3001.
• The DAB will run on localhost:9772, which means the traffic to the app will reach DAB (running on port 9772) first and then be proxied to the application (running on port 3001).
• We will provide the docker images for the DAB and this header-based application.

Part I: Keycloak Configuration

You will first need to start a Keycloak server. After registering an OIDC client on the server, obtain the following 4 values:

• Keycloak Server
• Realm Name
• Client ID
• Client Secret

These values will later be used to set up Datawiza Access Broker in Datawiza Cloud Management Console. Please follow IdP Configuration Guide: Keycloak instructions on how to get those keys/values.

Part II: Create Application on Datawiza Cloud Management Console (DCMC)

You need to create an application and generate a keypair of (PROVISIONING_KEY, PROVISIONING_SECRET) for this app on the DCMC.

Please follow Step2 : Datawiza Cloud Management Console to configure.

The Keycloak IdP configuration should be as follows:

Part III: Run DAB With a Header-Based Application

You can use either Docker or Kubernetes to run DAB. The following is an example docker-compose.yml file. You may need to login to our container registry to download the images of DAB and the header-based app. See Step3 : Configure DAB and SSO Integration for more details or Deploy DAB with Kubernetes for Kubernetes-specific instructions.

version: '3'

services:
  datawiza-access-broker:
    image: registry.gitlab.com/datawiza/access-broker
    container_name: datawiza-access-broker
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "9772:9772"
    environment:
      PROVISIONING_KEY: #############################
      PROVISIONING_SECRET: #############################

  header-based-app:
    image: registry.gitlab.com/datawiza/header-based-app
    container_name: ab-demo-header-app
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "3001:3001"

After executing docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up, the header-based app should have SSO enabled with Keycloak. Open a browser and type in http://localhost:9772/. You should see the Keycloak login page as follows.

Part IV: Pass User Attributes to the Header-Based App

DAB gets user attributes from IdP and can pass the user attributes to the application via header or cookie.

Please follow the instructions of Step4 : Pass User Attributes to pass the user attributes to the header-based app, which is expecting:

• email
• firstname
• lastname
• groups

After successfully configuring the user attributes, you should see the green check sign for each of the user attributes as follows. Notice, the user attributes will not be shown if you didn't add Client Roles view-users to user.

Part V: Achieve Granular Access Control

You can configure access control to an application based on user's attributes (e.g., groups, department) and other metadata of a request (e.g., URL, IP, http method, access time).

Please reference Step5 : Achieve Granular Access Control for detailed instructions on how to set up access rules. You can practice the rule configuration using the following example.

A Rule Example

1. Create a user in Keycloak, put it in hr group, and then assign this person to your client on Keycloak.

2. Create the following two rules:

• hr path can only be accessed by hr group.
• sales path can only be accessed by sales group.

3. Verify that the user you created can only access hr page in the header-based app, but cannot access sales page. Trying to access the header-based application on localhost:9772 in your browser, you should get something similar to the following screenshots.
   http://localhost:9772/hr: http://localhost:9772/sales: