[keycloak-dev] per-client authentication flows

[Bill Burke]

Makes sense for both direct grant and browser flow.  Please reread the
OP.   I'll try to summarize differently.  In Keycoak, using OAuth
authorization code grant protocol means that the 'Browser Flow" will
be invoked.  *All* OSIN clients use the code grant and clients are
configured individually whether a challenge based protocol should be
used or not.  It is a Keycloak requirement to remain backward
compatible so Keycloak can just be turned on with no changes.  What it
boils down to is cmd-line clients vs. browser clients.   I would hate
to add an architectural feature just to implement something OSIN
specific, but I think this would be useful beyond OSIN.  I'm thinking
of a purely text-based authenticaiton flow for cmd line clients.
Something I've been thinking about since this summer. Originally I was
thinking that we'd have to trigger a flow based on the OIDC 'display'
parameter, but now I'm thinking that per-client-flows is a more
elegant solution.

On Thu, Jan 18, 2018 at 10:44 AM, Stian Thorgersen <sthorger at redhat.com> wrote:
> Definitively makes sense for the 'Direct Grant Flow'.
>
> Did you also think about it for the 'Browser Flow'? That doesn't make sense
> to me as I don't think the client should have any control on the SSO flow.
>
>
> On 17 January 2018 at 20:37, Bill Burke <bburke at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> TLDR;  Per client authentication flows?  Client can be configured to
>> override realm authentication flows.
>>
>> Background:
>>
>> I'm specing out how we will replace OSIN (openshift oauth server) with
>> Keycloak.  One issue is that each oauth client in OSIN can specify the
>> authentication flow they want.  Non-browser clients like the 'oc' cmd
>> line tool want a 401, challenge-based protocol...Web console,
>> obviously wants HTML.  They All OSIN clients use the OAuth
>> auth-code-grant irregardless if they are non-brwoser or browser
>> clients.  Keycloak assumes this oauth grant type is browser based and
>> expects non-browser clients to use Resource Credentials grant or
>> client credential grant.  OSIN does not support this and we (keycloak)
>> have to be backward compatible.
>>
>> Solution:
>>
>> I think it would be pretty simple to add the ability to override
>> authentication flows per client.  I don't think this would be a
>> one-off for OSIN as we could use it to implement other non-browser
>> input protocols.  For example, I wanted to be able to have a
>> text-based auth flow for command line logins.  I think this could be a
>> way to implement that.
>> --
>> Bill Burke
>> Red Hat
>> _______________________________________________
>> keycloak-dev mailing list
>> keycloak-dev at lists.jboss.org
>> https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/keycloak-dev
>
>



-- 
Bill Burke
Red Hat