[keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm

[Sebastian Olscher]

Thanks Vlastimil, this might be a good option for a transitional phase.

I have created the feature request “KEYCLOAK-2141: The uniqueness of the email address should be configurable”. Concerning the contribution I would like to check our capacity, this might be a valid option. Therefor I propose to shift the discussion about the contribution out of this mailing list. Let´s have a deeper discussion after you have checked the feature request.

Thanks a lot,
Sebastian



From: Vlastimil Elias [mailto:velias at redhat.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 3:02 PM
To: Sebastian Olscher
Cc: keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm

Hi Sebastian,

small hint out of Keycloak. Some email servers (eg gmail) allows you to use email addresses with unresolved part after + sign, like sebastian.olscher+something at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher+something at traveltainment.de>. Emails for this kind of address are delivered to "base" email sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de> then. This may help you create more accounts with different emails delivered to same person.
If your email server doesn't support this "dynamic" aliasing then it probably supports some "static" aliases defined by admin.

Vl.


From: Stian Thorgersen [mailto:sthorger at redhat.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 1:13 PM
To: Sebastian Olscher
Cc: keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org
Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm



On 26 November 2015 at 12:18, Sebastian Olscher <sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de>> wrote:
Unfortunately this would also not solve the original issue: we are handling these accounts like all other accounts and using standard Keycloak features which all bases on the email address. Would it be a smaller effort to handle this check on software level? You can configure the uniqueness of the email address in each realm, check this on software level and delete the unique index in the database. Would that be manageable?

We can't guarantee that a email is unique without a constraint, as otherwise there's always a window where duplicates could be added. We can't remove the constraint either as the constraint applies to all realms, but further we can't change the db schema based on configuration options on a realm.

We would need to have a separate field in the db for non-unique email addresses. That's not really a big problem I think, but it would still be a fair bit of work to implement. We'd also need to have an option on a realm on what attribute to use as username, options should be username/email, username or email.

You can add a feature request, but ATM we're stretched rather thin so it would be a while until we could implement it. Unless you are willing to contribute it though? If you are then we should discuss how it should be done, and also need to double check if there's any problems in adding it.


“Email address unique or not?” – I have found a similar discussion and a recommendation in the OpenId-Connect-Spezification:
“Therefore, the only guaranteed unique identifier for a given End-User is the combination of the iss Claim and the sub Claim.
All other Claims carry no such guarantees across different issuers in terms of stability over time or uniqueness across users, and Issuers are permitted to apply local restrictions and policies. For instance, an Issuer MAY re-use an email Claim Value across different End-Users at different points in time, and the claimed email address for a given End-User MAY change over time. Therefore, other Claims such as email, phone_number, and preferred_username and MUST NOT be used as unique identifiers for the End-User. “ [OpenId-Connect Core Spzification 1.0 – 5.7 Calim
Stability and Uniqueness]
So, at this point, we have a local restriction of Keycloak which says that the email claim has to be unique. This is absolutely compliant but as the example exactly describes the email case, I think others were also dealing with this topic. Because of this, the spezification recommends to make the email address not unique. What do you think, would that be an option for a new feature?
From: Stian Thorgersen [mailto:sthorger at redhat.com<mailto:sthorger at redhat.com>]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2015 8:58 AM

To: Sebastian Olscher
Cc: keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org<mailto:keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org>
Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm

I meant that you'd use the attribute option only for the "server accounts" where it's not the email of the user, but a contact email. For regular users you'd continue using the email field. Would that work? You can even write a custom protocol mapper that takes either and adds it to the same claim in the token.

The email field has a unique constraint in the database and that's not something we can enable/disable with a realm option. I think we'd have to add an additional field or store the email as an attribute. Could be a bit messy and quite a bit of work to do.

On 26 November 2015 at 08:29, Sebastian Olscher <sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de>> wrote:
Unfortunately this is not easily possible because we want to use out-of-the-box features such as „update profile email”, „reset password email” and others, where Keycloak uses the email address of the account.

As I understood the reason why the email address was designed as unique is that it could be also used as the username. Would it be possible to implement this as a feature within the realm config? You can configure if you want to allow the usage of the email address as the username. If not, the email address has not to be unique. For us, this would make totally sense and helps us to fulfill the requirement. Would that be possible if there are no other preventing side effects?

From: Stian Thorgersen [mailto:sthorger at redhat.com<mailto:sthorger at redhat.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 8:31 PM

To: Sebastian Olscher
Cc: keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org<mailto:keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org>
Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm

In that case could you just set the contact email address as an attribute instead? The email field has to be unique has it can be in place of username. You could even use protocol mappers to map either email or the attribute to the same claim in the token.

On 25 November 2015 at 15:57, Sebastian Olscher <sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de>> wrote:
This receives importance if we are talking about users which will be used by a system and not a human person. These users may have the same responsible contact person as there is a system using this account and no real human. The contact person is identified by the email address. Our own specific information will be designed as user attributes.

For example:

Username: sys_customer1
Email address: sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de> (Email address of the contact person who is responsible for this user)
User attribute: Key=customer, Value=customer1

Username: sys_customer2
Email address: sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de> (Email address of the contact person who is responsible for this user)
User attribute: Key=customer, Value=customer2

From: Stian Thorgersen [mailto:sthorger at redhat.com<mailto:sthorger at redhat.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 3:04 PM
To: Sebastian Olscher
Cc: keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org<mailto:keycloak-user at lists.jboss.org>
Subject: Re: [keycloak-user] Email is unique within one realm

That's not possible at the moment. Out of curiosity why would you have two different accounts for the same person?

On 25 November 2015 at 15:01, Sebastian Olscher <sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de<mailto:sebastian.olscher at traveltainment.de>> wrote:
Hello,

the email address is unique within one realm. Is there a possibility to fulfill the requirement to have different user (different usernames) for different applications within one realm which were managed and used by the same person/entity?

For example:

Username: I_Am_An_Admin
Email: user at traveltainment.de<mailto:user at traveltainment.de>
(gets roles for every client within the realm)

Username: I_Am_A_Normal_User
Email: user at traveltainment.de<mailto:user at traveltainment.de>
(get roles from only one client within the realm)

Is this unambiguity of the email address configurable?

Thanks,
Sebastian

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