[keycloak-dev] Automatically login user to application when logged into realm

Thu Oct 24 08:13:40 EDT 2013

Not to drag this on, but take a look at how google does it.

If you are not logged in, and you go to gmail.com, you are redirected 
immediately to accounts.google.com and you must log in there.  After you 
login you are redirected back to gmail.com.

If you leave gmail.com and visit another website, then come back to 
gmail.com, it does an immediate redirect to accounts.google.com which 
then immediately redirects you back to gmail.

So, I feel better.  I'm not so old school... :). Google works pretty 
much the same way the keycloak demo works.  There is one difference 
though that I i'm not sure if we should follow:  I'm guessing that to 
implement single sign off, Google will always redirect to 
accounts.google.com to check to see if you're logged in when you visit a 
google page.

On 10/24/2013 5:17 AM, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
> No worries, it's one of those things that happens with trying to explain something over email/IRC.
>
> I think it should be an optional feature support by all adapters. For the AS7 adapter I was thinking you'd specify it in 'resteasy-oauth.json' ({..., 'auto-login' : true }?). If it's enabled and the first request is to an unsecured resource it would redirect to 'auth/login?prompt=none'. I'm happy to add a proposal to the AS7 adapter if you'd like.
>

I don't think this approach can work very well in old-school web apps, 
if at all.  For pure Servlet apps you're either accessing a secure area 
or you're not.  A URL can't be both secure and unsecure at the same 
time.  Plus, if you have any kind of latency, a full browser redirect 
just to check if you're logged in with the auth-server is going to be 
pretty ugly.

The application adapter *DOES* still need an amILoggedIn REST call.  By 
default it should just return:

{
    "loggedIn" : true,
    "user" : "wburke"
}

If you set a flag in resteasy-oauth.json, it will also contain the 
access token

{
    loggedIn : true,
    "user" : "wburke",
    "token" : "asdfasdfasdfqwerqwer"
}

amILoggedIn would be authenticated by a http-only cookie.

> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Burke" <bburke at redhat.com>
>> To: "Stian Thorgersen" <stian at redhat.com>
>> Cc: keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> Sent: Wednesday, 23 October, 2013 10:01:41 PM
>> Subject: Re: [keycloak-dev] Automatically login user to application when logged into realm
>>
>> I guess I see what you mean.  You want to be able to show a
>> login/register links on the *application's* page and not just redirect
>> immediately to the keycloak screens when you first visit the page.  I
>> guess I'm thinking too old school Java EE app that would automatically
>> bring you to the login screen if you access secured content.  I feel
>> like a dinosaur sometimes.  Too bad I still have 20 year until I retire.
>>
>> Apologies for wasting your time.
>>
>> Gonna have to figure out how to support this scenario for a traditional
>> web app too.
>>
>> On 10/23/2013 3:58 PM, Stian Thorgersen wrote:
>>> Yes I read your response and yes I have played with your demo.
>>>
>>> Let's then revisit this with the demo in mind, and you can tell me where
>>> I'm mistaken.
>>>
>>> I visit http://localhost:8080/customer-portal/. The urls '/admins/*'
>>> require the admin role and '/customers/*' requires the user role. If I
>>> click on a link taking me to any of these pages the adapter redirects me
>>> to the auth-server. In this case it works, as if I try to visit a private
>>> url I should be presented with a login form if I'm not already logged in.
>>> So there's no problem that the adapter automatically redirects me to the
>>> auth-server.
>>>
>>> Now, imagine that this is an real application. Where the front-page would,
>>> if the user is not logged in, show "Login" and "Register" links, and would
>>> not show links to pages that an anonymous user is not allowed to access
>>> (for example 'Customer Listing'). If a user is logged in the application
>>> would not show 'Login' and 'Register' but instead show 'Hello User,
>>> welcome back' and would include links to pages that particular user is
>>> allowed to access (for example if the current user had the role user, but
>>> not admin, only the 'Customer Listing', not the 'Customer Admin Interface'
>>> link, would be displayed).
>>>
>>> How would I be able to implement that behaviour with the current way
>>> Keycloak works?
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Bill Burke" <bburke at redhat.com>
>>>> To: "Stian Thorgersen" <stian at redhat.com>
>>>> Cc: keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, 23 October, 2013 8:18:32 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [keycloak-dev] Automatically login user to application when
>>>> logged into realm
>>>>
>>>> Did you even read my response?  I completely mapped out the entire flow
>>>> of how it works *now* in our demo and how it could work with a pure
>>>> HTML5 app.  Go play with the demo to understand things better maybe?
>>>>
>>>> You talkd about this before:
>>>>    > A company has an internal Keycloak server, they have a single realm
>>>> with multiple internal applications. All applications are hosted on
>>>> different servers. Let's imagine this company is called Red Hat. The
>>>> user, let's call him Stian, first goes to the OrangeHRM to book some
>>>> long overdue holiday. He's not currently logged in to the realm so is is
>>>> shown an anonymous access screen instead with a login link. Stian
>>>> presses login, fills in username and password and successfully logs in
>>>> to the realm. Now Stian wants to go to docspace, again Stian has to
>>>> press the Login link, but doesn't have to provide a username or
>>>> password, but instead is simply redirected back to the application as a
>>>> logged in user. Stian is actually a bit confused about this as he just
>>>> logged in to an application without providing a username or password.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What you describe is not how our demo works nor will it ever work that
>>>> way.  You log in once to the auth server, any app you visit knows who
>>>> you are.  There's no need to click a "login" button when you visit a new
>>>> site.  HTML5 app would work exactly the same way as any of the WARs in
>>>> the Keycloak demo code except all the redirect and cookie processing
>>>> would happen within Javascript within the browser. There's just no need
>>>> for your extra "no-forms" invocation!  The login check is already built
>>>> into the protocol.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.tizag.com/javascriptT/javascriptredirect.php
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Bill Burke
>>>> JBoss, a division of Red Hat
>>>> http://bill.burkecentral.com
>>>>
>>
>> --
>> Bill Burke
>> JBoss, a division of Red Hat
>> http://bill.burkecentral.com
>>

-- 
Bill Burke
JBoss, a division of Red Hat
http://bill.burkecentral.com