[keycloak-dev] Application Initiated Actions

[Peter Skopek]

Since there is no "silent" application initiated action (always
prompts user) possible and actions are predefined at keycloak I see no
need for the client/application restriction mechanism.

On Wed, Feb 27, 2019 at 4:23 PM Stian Thorgersen <sthorger at redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Keycloak currently has required actions that are used to prompt the user to
> perform an action associated with their account after authenticating, but
> prior to being redirected to the application.
>
> Examples include: configure OTP, update profile, validate email, etc.
>
> One issue here is these actions have to be manually registered with the
> users account, but can not be initiated by applications themselves. As an
> example it may not be required by all users to verify their email, but only
> when they use specific applications.
>
> Keycloak also needs to initiate actions from the account management
> console. Examples: updating email address should require verifying the
> email, configuring OTP, etc.
>
> With that in mind we are proposing to introduce Application Initiated
> Actions. An Application Initiated Action behind the scenes is just a
> Required Action, but it is initiated by an application and depending on the
> action may be optional for the user to complete (where the user can select
> cancel which would return the user back to the application).
>
> No Application Initiated Actions should perform any updates to the users
> account without prompting the user first. For example an application
> initiated action that is used to link an existing account to a social
> provider should ask the user first if they want to link to the provider.
>
> To make it easy for applications to integrate these I would like to
> leverage the standard OAuth flows that applications use to authenticate
> users. So to initiate verify-email action the application would redirect to
> the authentication endpoint and add kc_action=<action alias> query
> parameter.
>
> One open question I have right now is. Assuming all Application Initiated
> Actions always prompt the user first do we need to add some mechanism in
> place to restrict what clients/applications are permitted to initiate an
> action? Requiring that would make it harder to use for applications.
>
> One thing I would also like to add is the ability for an Application
> Initiated Action to require the user to re-authenticate prior to performing
> the action. For example update password should require the user to enter
> the current password, while verify email should not (as it simply sends an
> email with a link to continue).
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