In this article we'll be using Keycloak to quickly augment an application with user management and SSO. We will demonstrate the integration by securing a page for logged-in users. This quickly provides a jump-off point to more complex integrations.

Setting up a Keycloak Instance​

Setting up an OIDC Client​

Adding a Non-Admin User​

Setting up a Vue.js Project​

This example uses Vue.js. We're going to leverage oidc-client-ts to integrate OIDC authentication with the Vue app. The oidc-client-ts package is a well-maintained and used library. It provides a lot of utilities for building out a fully production app.

1. Clone the Phase Two example repo.

2. Open the Vue folder within /frameworks/vue and open the /nuxt/oidc-client-ts folder.

3. Run npm install and then npm run dev.

4. We'll review where we configure out Keycloak instance. First open /auth.ts. In this file you will want to update it with the values for the Keycloak instance we set-up earlier in the tutorial. Update the clientSecret with the value. Use and environment variable here if you wish.

   export const keycloakConfig = {
     authorityUrl: "https://euc1.auth.ac",
     applicationUrl: "http://localhost:3000",
     realm: "shared-deployment-001",
     clientId: "reg-example-1",
     clientSecret: "CLIENT_SECRET",
   };
   

   After the config, you can see how the OIDC instance is started.

   const settings = {
     authority: `${keycloakConfig.authorityUrl}/auth/realms/${keycloakConfig.realm}`,
     client_id: keycloakConfig.clientId,
     client_secret: keycloakConfig.clientSecret,
     redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}/auth`,
     silent_redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}/silent-refresh`,
     post_logout_redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}`,
     response_type: "code",
     userStore: new WebStorageStateStore(),
     loadUserInfo: true,
   };
   this.userManager = new UserManager(settings);
   

5. With the Keycloak instance defined, we attach this to the app instance for Vue. Switch to /main.ts

   import Auth from "@/auth";
   // ...
   app.config.globalProperties.$auth = Auth;
   

   We pull in the Auth instance then expose it through the $auth variable.

6. There are a few main pages in play here that we define to create paths the library can leverage. The /view/auth and /view/silent-refresh create paths at the same name. These are used to do the redirection during authentication. From within these we use the Auth instance to direct the user around within the app. For instance in /views/AuthView:

   export default {
     name: "AuthAuthenticated",
     async mounted() {
       try {
         await this.$auth.signinCallback();
         this.$router.push("/");
       } catch (e) {
         console.error(e);
       }
     },
   };
   

   The router.push naively sends someone to the home page. This could be updated to go to any number of places, including the page one started the login flow from if you were to store that information to be retrieved.

7. Now that we have all the things setup, we can define the user component /components/User to easily pull information about the user's state and display the appropriate UI.

   export default {
     name: "UserComponent",
     data() {
       return {
         user: null,
         signIn: () => this.$auth.signinRedirect(),
         logout: () => this.$auth.signoutRedirect(),
       };
     },
     async created() {
       const user = await this.$auth.getUser();
       if (user) {
         this.user = user;
       }
     },
   };
   

   With this, the user object is now easily available. A simple v-if="user" allows the app to determine what UI to show.

Learning more​

Phase Two's enhanced Keycloak provides many ways to quickly control and tweak the log in and user management experience. Our blog has many use cases from customizing login pages, setting up magic links (password-less sign in), and Organization workflows.

In this article we'll be using Keycloak to quickly augment an application with user management and SSO. We will demonstrate the integration by securing a page for logged-in users. This quickly provides a jump-off point to more complex integrations.

Setting up a Keycloak Instance​

Setting up an OIDC Client​

Adding a Non-Admin User​

Setting up a Nuxt Project​

This example uses Nuxt3. There are a couple methods by which you can integrate Keycloak to your Nuxt application. We're going to explore two methods here, one uses keycloak-js and the other leverages oidc-client-ts. The keycloak-js library provides a simple, client-only method, but lacks some of the sophistication provided by the oidc-client library that is heavily supported and more widely used.

Using keycloak-js​

1. Clone the Phase Two example repo.

2. Open the Nuxt folder within /frameworks/nuxt and open the keycloak-js folder within /frameworks/nuxt/keycloak-js.

3. Run npm install and then npm run dev. keycloak-js is a Javascript library that provides a fast way to secure an application.

4. The project makes use of the following Nuxt items: components, composables, layouts, and plugins. We'll review each in kind.

5. The main component that shows the User's authenticated state is in /components/User. In this component we call the useKeycloak composable, which let's us key into the keycloak-js functions that we've wrapped to make easily availble.

   const { keycloak, authState } = useKeycloak();
   
   function login() {
     keycloak.login();
   }
   
   function logout() {
     keycloak.logout();
   }
   

   Lower in the file the component leverages v-if checks to determine if the authState is authenticated or not. Depending on the state, a Log in or Log out button is available.

6. Let's take a look at the setup for the composable next. Our composable is in /composables/keycloak-c. A composable is a function defined that can be called anywhere in the Nuxt application. It's a good way to abstract logic to be reused. In our case we use it to wrap a keycloak-js plugin (more on that in the next step) and help provided a state value for the authenticated state.

   export const useKeycloak = () => {
     const nuxtApp = useNuxtApp();
     const keycloak = nuxtApp.$keycloak as Keycloak;
     const authState = useState("authState", () => "unAuthenticated");
   
     keycloak.onAuthSuccess = () => (authState.value = "authenticated");
     keycloak.onAuthError = () => (authState.value = "error");
   
     return {
       keycloak,
       authState,
     };
   };
   

7. In the plugin, /plugins/keycloak.client.ts we instantiate the keycloak-js library. We can then attach that instance to the NuxtApp instance. Substitute the correct values for your Keycloak instance that we created earlier in the tutorial.

   export default defineNuxtPlugin((nuxtApp) => {
     const initOptions: KeycloakConfig = {
       url: "https://euc1.auth.ac/auth/",
       realm: "shared-deployment-001",
       clientId: "reg-example-1",
     };
   
     const keycloak = new Keycloak(initOptions);
   
     nuxtApp.$keycloak = keycloak;
   
     keycloak.init({
       onLoad: "check-sso",
     });
   });
   

8. The logic for checking the authenticated state can be used to expand in ways to secure your site in a number of ways.

Using oidc-client​

The oidc-client-ts package is a well-maintained and used library. It provides a lot of utilities for building out a fully production app.

1. Clone the Phase Two example repo.

2. Open the Nuxt folder within /frameworks/nuxt and open the /nuxt/oidc-client-ts folder.

3. Run npm install and then npm run dev.

4. The structure of the project is similar to the keycloak-js version but with a the use of services, stores, and middleware.

5. We'll review where we configure out Keycloak instance. First open /services/keycloak-config.ts. In this file you will want to update it with the values for the Keycloak instance we set-up earlier in the tutorial. Make sure you are using the one with Client Authentication enabled. Update the clientSecret with the value. Use and environment variable here if you wish.

   export const keycloakConfig = {
     authorityUrl: "https://euc1.auth.ac",
     applicationUrl: "http://localhost:3000",
     realm: "shared-deployment-001",
     clientId: "reg-example-1",
     clientSecret: "CLIENT_SECRET",
   };
   

6. Switch over to the /services/auth-service now to see how the Oidc instance is started. The class pulls in values from the keycloakConfig to use in the constructor. The other functions are wrappers around methods provided by the oidc-client library. This allows us to key into things like signInRedirect and signoutRedirect.

   How the settings are integrated:

   const settings = {
     authority: `${keycloakConfig.authorityUrl}/auth/realms/${keycloakConfig.realm}`,
     client_id: keycloakConfig.clientId,
     client_secret: keycloakConfig.clientSecret,
     redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}/auth`,
     silent_redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}/silent-refresh`,
     post_logout_redirect_uri: `${window.location.origin}`,
     response_type: "code",
     userStore: new WebStorageStateStore(),
     loadUserInfo: true,
   };
   this.userManager = new UserManager(settings);
   

   Example function wrapper:

   public signInRedirect() {
     return this.userManager.signinRedirect();
   }
   

7. With the AuthService defined, we can now expose that through a composable. Switch to the /composables/useServices file. The file is simple but provides a way for any component to hook into the service instance.

   import AuthService from "@/services/auth-service";
   import ApplicationService from "@/services/application-service";
   import { useAuth } from "@/stores/auth";
   
   export const useServices = () => {
     const authStore = useAuth();
   
     return {
       $auth: new AuthService(),
       $application: new ApplicationService(authStore.access_token),
     };
   };
   

   We pull in the AuthService then expose it through the $auth variable. The $application variable exposes the ApplicationService which is provided as an example of how you could secure API calls.

8. We leverage the pinia library to make store User information to make it easily accessible. Open /stores/auth/index. From within this file, we can wrap the User object exposed by the oidc-client package. This can then be leveraged in the middleware function we want to define or to pull information quickly about the user.

9. There are a few main pages in play here that we define to create paths the library can leverage. The /pages/auth, /pages/logout, /pages/silent-refresh create paths at the same name. These are used to do the redirection during authentication or log out. From within these we use the AuthService to direct the user around within the app. For instance in /auth:

   const authenticateOidc = async () => {
     try {
       await services.$auth.signInCallback();
       router.push("/");
     } catch (error) {
       console.error(error);
     }
   };
   
   await authenticateOidc();
   

   The router.push naively sends someone to the home page. This could be updated to go to any number of places, including the page one started the login flow from if you were to store that information to be retrieved.

10. We have also created a middleware file in /middleware/auth.global to be used in a couple of ways. It checks if the user is authenticated and based on that knowledge, stores the user information in the store (if not there) or could be used to send someone to login. For our example, we created buttons to initiate that but there is a comment which shows how you could force a set of paths to require login.

    const authFlowRoutes = ["/auth", "/silent-refresh", "/logout"];
    
    export default defineNuxtRouteMiddleware(async (to, from) => {
      const authStore = useAuth();
      const services = useServices();
      const user = (await services.$auth.getUser()) as User;
    
      if (!user && !authFlowRoutes.includes(to.path)) {
        // use this to automatically force a sign in and redirect
        // services.$auth.signInRedirect();
      } else {
        authStore.setUpUserCredentials(user);
      }
    });
    

11. Now that we have all the things setup, we can define the user component /components/User to easily pull information about the user's state and display the appropriate UI.

    const authStore = useAuth();
    const user = authStore.user;
    
    const signIn = () => services.$auth.signInRedirect();
    const signOut = () => services.$auth.logout();
    

    With this, the user object is now easily available. A simple v-if="user" allows the app to determine what UI to show.

12. A bit more complicated of a setup, but more elegant in the handling of the logged in flow. The oidc-client allows for much better fine-tuning of the experience.

Learning more​

Phase Two's enhanced Keycloak provides many ways to quickly control and tweak the log in and user management experience. Our blog has many use cases from customizing login pages, setting up magic links (password-less sign in), and Organization workflows.

Django is a high-level, open-source web framework for building web applications using the Python programming language. It follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern.

In this article we'll be using Keycloak to secure a Django Web application.

Setting up a Django Project​

The following could be applied to an existing Django application, but we have chosen to use the excellent tutorial application built by Mozilla as our example. If you aren't yet familiar with Django, we encourage you to follow the tutorial there.

The completed code for that tutorial is available in their GitHub repository. We'll clone it to get started.

Quick Start​

To get this project up and running locally on your computer:

1. Set up the Python development environment. We recommend using a Python virtual environment.
2. Assuming you have Python setup, run the following commands (if you're on Windows you may use py or py -3 instead of python to start Python):

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   python manage.py makemigrations
   python manage.py migrate
   python manage.py collectstatic
   python manage.py test # Run the standard tests. These should all pass.
   python manage.py createsuperuser # Create a superuser
   python manage.py runserver
   
3. Open a browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ to open the admin site
4. Create a few test objects of each type.
5. Open tab to http://127.0.0.1:8000 to see the main site, with your new objects.

Setting up a Keycloak Instance​

Before customizing the Django app, we need to set up and configure our Keycloak instance.

Setting up an OIDC Client​

Adding a Non-Admin User​

Install and configure the Django OIDC library​

Now that we've installed and configured Keycloak, we need to setup Django to replace the native authentication method provided by the framework. The first task is to install a library that is compatible with Keycloak's OIDC implementation.

The mozilla-django-oidc library provides an easy way to integrate Keycloak (or any OpenID Connect-compliant identity provider) with your Django app. It abstracts many of the complexities of integrating authentication and authorization. Here's how you can set it up:

1. Install the Package: Install the mozilla-django-oidc package using pip:

   pip install mozilla-django-oidc
   

2. Configure Django Settings: Update your Django app's settings.py to include the necessary configurations for mozilla-django-oidc:

   INSTALLED_APPS = [
       # ...
       'django.contrib.auth',
       'mozilla_django_oidc',  # Load after django.contrib.auth
       # ...
   ]
   
   AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = (
       'mozilla_django_oidc.auth.OIDCAuthenticationBackend',
       # ...
   )
   
   OIDC_RP_CLIENT_ID = 'your-client-id'
   OIDC_RP_CLIENT_SECRET = 'your-client-secret'
   OIDC_OP_AUTHORIZATION_ENDPOINT = 'https://keycloak-url/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/auth'
   OIDC_OP_TOKEN_ENDPOINT = 'https://keycloak-url/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/token'
   OIDC_OP_USER_ENDPOINT = 'https://keycloak-url/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/userinfo'
   OIDC_OP_JWKS_ENDPOINT = 'https://keycloak-url/auth/realms/your-realm/protocol/openid-connect/certs'
   OIDC_RP_SIGN_ALGO = 'RS256'
   
   LOGIN_URL = 'oidc_authentication_init'
   LOGOUT_REDIRECT_URL = '/'
   LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = '/'
   

   Replace your-client-id, your-client-secret, and the Keycloak URLs with your actual Keycloak configurations.

3. Add URLs: Update your Django app's urls.py to include the authentication URLs provided by mozilla-django-oidc:

   urlpatterns += [
       path('oidc/', include('mozilla_django_oidc.urls')),
   ]
   

Using it in your app​

Protect your views​

Use Decorators for Access Control. You can now use the @oidc_protected decorator to protect views that require authentication and potentially specific roles:

from mozilla_django_oidc.decorators import oidc_protected

@oidc_protected
def protected_view(request):
    # Your view logic

Accessing user information​

You can access user information after authentication using the request.oidc_user attribute. For example:

def profile_view(request):
    user_info = request.oidc_user.userinfo
    # Access user_info['sub'], user_info['email'], etc.
    # Your view logic

By default, mozilla-django-oidc looks up a Django user matching the email field to the email address returned in the user info data from Keycloak.

If a user logs into your site and doesn’t already have an account, by default, mozilla-django-oidc will create a new Django user account. It will create the User instance filling in the username (hash of the email address) and email fields.

Use Username rather than Email​

mozilla-django-oidc defaults to setting up Django users using the email address as the user name from keycloak was required. Fortunately, preferred_username is set up by default in Keycloak as a claim. The claim can used by overriding the OIDCAuthenticationBackend class in mozilla_django_oidc.auth and referring to this in AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS as below:

# Classes to override default OIDCAuthenticationBackend (Keycloak authentication)
from mozilla_django_oidc.auth import OIDCAuthenticationBackend

class KeycloakOIDCAuthenticationBackend(OIDCAuthenticationBackend):

 def create_user(self, claims):
     """ Overrides Authentication Backend so that Django users are
         created with the keycloak preferred_username.
         If nothing found matching the email, then try the username.
     """
     user = super(KeycloakOIDCAuthenticationBackend, self).create_user(claims)
     user.first_name = claims.get('given_name', '')
     user.last_name = claims.get('family_name', '')
     user.email = claims.get('email')
     user.username = claims.get('preferred_username')
     user.save()
     return user

 def filter_users_by_claims(self, claims):
     """ Return all users matching the specified email.
         If nothing found matching the email, then try the username
     """
     email = claims.get('email')
     preferred_username = claims.get('preferred_username')

     if not email:
         return self.UserModel.objects.none()
     users = self.UserModel.objects.filter(email__iexact=email)

     if len(users) < 1:
         if not preferred_username:
             return self.UserModel.objects.none()
         users = self.UserModel.objects.filter(username__iexact=preferred_username)
     return users

 def update_user(self, user, claims):
     user.first_name = claims.get('given_name', '')
     user.last_name = claims.get('family_name', '')
     user.email = claims.get('email')
     user.username = claims.get('preferred_username')
     user.save()
     return user

In settings.py, overide the new library you have just added in AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS :

 # mozilla_django_oidc - Keycloak authentication
 "fragalysis.auth.KeycloakOIDCAuthenticationBackend",

Logging out​

You can use the @oidc_logout decorator to log the user out of both your app and Keycloak:

from mozilla_django_oidc.decorators import oidc_logout

@oidc_logout
def logout_view(request):
    # Your logout view logic

Add support for Django Rest Framework​

Django Rest Framework (DRF) is a flexible toolkit built on top of Django, specifically designed for building RESTful APIs.

If you want DRF to authenticate users based on an OAuth access token provided in the Authorization header, you can use the DRF-specific authentication class which ships with the package.

Add this to your settings:

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'DEFAULT_AUTHENTICATION_CLASSES': [
        'mozilla_django_oidc.contrib.drf.OIDCAuthentication',
        'rest_framework.authentication.SessionAuthentication',
        # other authentication classes, if needed
    ],
}

Note that this only takes care of authenticating against an access token, and provides no options to create or renew tokens.

If you’ve created a custom Django OIDCAuthenticationBackend and added that to your AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS, the DRF class should be smart enough to figure that out. Alternatively, you can manually set the OIDC backend to use:

OIDC_DRF_AUTH_BACKEND = 'mozilla_django_oidc.auth.OIDCAuthenticationBackend'

Learning more​

Phase Two's enhanced Keycloak provides many ways to quickly control and tweak the log in and user management experience. Our blog has many use cases from customizing login pages, setting up magic links (password-less sign in), and Organization workflows.

In this article we'll be using Keycloak to quickly augment an application with user management and SSO. We will demonstrate the integration by securing a page for logged-in users. This quickly provides a jump-off point to more complex integrations.

Setting up a Keycloak Instance​

Setting up an OIDC Client​

Adding a Non-Admin User​

Setting up a Next.js Project​

This example uses Next.js 13 and splits server and client components accordingly.

1. Clone the Phase Two example repo.

2. Open the Next.js folder within /frameworks/nextjs.

3. Run npm install and then npm run dev. This example leverages NextAuth.js to provide hook and HOC support.

4. NextAuth.js configures an API route that is uses for the Authentication of the Client. It generates the routes automatically for you. These are added to Next.js in the api/auth/[...nextauth]/route.ts file.

5. Open the src/lib/auth.ts file. This is a server only file. We will be updating a few values from the prior section where we set up our OIDC client. Taking the values from the OIDC Client Config section, set those values in the code. While it is recommended to use Environment variables for the secret, for the purpose of this tutorial, paste in the Client secret from the OIDC client creation section for the value of clientSecret

   const authServerUrl = "https://euc1.auth.ac/auth/";
   const realm = "shared-deployment-001";
   const clientId = "reg-example-1";
   const clientSecret = "CLIENT_SECRET"; // Paste "Client secret" here. Use Environment variables in prod
   

   Those are used to popluate the AuthOptions config for the KeycloakProvider:

   export const AuthOptions: NextAuthOptions = {
     providers: [
       KeycloakProvider({
         clientId,
         clientSecret,
         issuer: `${authServerUrl}realms/${realm}`,
       }),
     ],
   };
   

   The config is then provided to the AuthProvider in the /src/app/layout.tsx file. Next.js uses this file to generate an HTML view for this page.

   import { NextAuthProvider as AuthProvider } from "./providers";
   ...
   <AuthProvider {...oidcConfig}>
     <App />
   </AuthProvider>
   

   At this point our entire application will be able to access all information and methods needed to perform authentication. View the providers.tsx file for additional information about how the SessionProvider is used. The SessionProvider enables use of Hooks to derive the authenticated state. View user.component.tsx for exactly how the code is authenticating your user. The sections rendering the "Log in" and "Log out" buttons are conditional areas based on the authenticated context. The buttons invoke functions provided by NextAuth.

   The logic using the hook to conditionally determine the Authenticated state, can be used to secure routes, components, and more.

6. Open localhost:3000. You will see the Phase Two example landing page. You current state should be "Not authenticated". Click Log In. This will redirect you to your login page.

   info

   Use the non-admin user created in the previous section to sign in.

7. Enter the credentials of the non-admin user you created. Click Submit. You will then be redirected to the application. The Phase Two example landing page now loads your "Authenticated" state, displaying your user's email and their Token.

8. After your first log in, click Log out. Then click Log in again. Notice how this time you will not be redirected to sign in as your state is already in the browser. Neat! If you clear the browser state for that tab, then you will have to be redirected away to sign-in again.

Learning more​

Phase Two's enhanced Keycloak provides many ways to quickly control and tweak the log in and user management experience. Our blog has many use cases from customizing login pages, setting up magic links (password-less sign in), and Organization workflows.

In this article we'll be using Keycloak to quickly augment an application with user management and SSO. We will demonstrate the integration by securing a page for logged-in users. This quickly provides a jump-off point to more complex integrations.

Setting up a Keycloak Instance​

Setting up an OIDC Client​

Adding a Non-Admin User​

Setting up a ReactJS Project​

1. Clone the Phase Two example repo.

2. Open the ReactJS folder within /frameworks/reactjs.

3. Run npm install and then npm start. This example leverages react-oidc-context (which uses oidc-client-ts) to provide hook and HOC support.

4. Open the index.tsx file. We will be updating a few values from the prior section where we set up our OIDC client. Taking the values from the OIDC Client Config section, set those values in the code.

   const authServerUrl = "https://euc1.auth.ac/auth/";
   const realm = "shared-deployment-001";
   const client = "reg-example-1";
   

   Those are used to popluate the OIDC config

   const oidcConfig = {
     authority: `${authServerUrl}realms/${realm}`,
     client_id: client,
     redirect_uri: "http://localhost:3000/authenticated",
     onSigninCallback: (args: any) =>
       window.history.replaceState(
         {},
         document.title,
         window.location.pathname
       ),
   };
   

   The config is then provided to the AuthProvider.

   <AuthProvider {...oidcConfig}>
     <App />
   </AuthProvider>
   

   At this point our entire applicationw will be able to access all information and methods needed to perform authentication. View Auth.tsx for exactly how the code is authenticating your user. The sections rendering the "Log in" and "Log out" buttons are conditional areas based on the authenticated context.

   The logic using the hook to conditionally determine the Authenticated state, can be used to secure routes, components, and more.

5. Open localhost:3000. You will see the Phase Two example landing page. You current state should be "Not authenticated". Click Log In. This will redirect you to your login page.

   info

   Use the non-admin user created in the previous section to sign in.

6. Enter the credentials of the non-admin user you created. Click Submit. You will then be redirected to the application. The Phase Two example landing page now loads your "Authenticated" state, displaying your user's email and their Token.

7. After your first log in, click Log out. Then click Log in again. Notice how this time you will not be redirected to sign in as your state is already in the browser. Neat! If you clear the browser state for that tab, then you will have to be redirected away to sign-in again.

Learning more​

Phase Two's enhanced Keycloak provides many ways to quickly control and tweak the log in and user management experience. Our blog has many use cases from customizing login pages, setting up magic links (password-less sign in), and Organization workflows.

We're excited today to announce the launch of our dedicated clusters offering. Our Phase Two enhanced Keycloak distribution is now available as a hosted, dedicated cluster in the region of your choice.

About 9 months ago, we launched our self-service, shared deployments, offering customers the ability to create Phase Two enhanced Keycloak realms on our shared clusters. Over that period, we've provided over 700 free realms for testing and small production use cases. Many of you have reached out to us asking about an SLA, isolated resources, and ability to grow into larger use cases. Based on your requests and feedback, we built out our dedicated cluster offering.

What is Phase Two again?​

Phase Two helps SaaS builders accelerate time-to-market and enterprise adoption with powerful SSO, identity and user management features. To that end, Phase Two has created an enhanced distribution of Keycloak that bundles several essential open source extensions for modern SaaS use cases. We support hosted and on-prem customers for a variety of use cases.

Why dedicated?​

Dedicated clusters allow us to provide compute, network and storage isolation for customer workloads, and to easily deploy in the region where customer's users are. With dedicated clusters, we can guarantee an SLA that meets customer's needs with no resource contention from other customers.

Furthermore, it allows us to support customer-provided domain names, and access to monitoring and management capabilities not available in the shared clusters.

How did you do it?​

We built out our dedicated cluster offering using the best-of-breed open source tools and managed services.

The core consists of Kubernetes clusters in each supported AWS and GCP region. New dedicated clusters are provisioned instantly using FluxCD, a continuous delivery solution that gives us the history and auditability of git. Monitoring and alerting is done using Prometheus, Grafana, and a suite of external services that give us a complete view of cluster health.

The database tier uses a managed CockroachDB service provided by Cockroach Labs. Phase Two is the only provider that is capable of hosting the current Keycloak distribution (the "legacy" store) using CockroachDB. Working with Cockroach Labs gives us the expertise and reliability from hosting thousands of customer clusters at massive scale.

Take me to it!​

Starting today, you'll be able to log into the updated dashboard, and create your dedicated cluster by selecting a region and setting up your billing information.

Following successful billing setup, you will be returned to the Dashboard while your Cluster is provisioned. Once provisioned, you'll be able to create up to 20 realms per cluster, using the same easy setup as you are used to in the shared deployment offering.

Most clusters will be provisioned within 30 minutes, but some requests may take up to 24 hours. Additionally, for payment types such as ACH or SEPA, cluster provisioning will begin following payment clearing (up to 4 days in some cases).

How much does it cost?​

Plans start at $499US per month when paid annually. This provides a set of compute, network and storage resources that have been tested for common use cases for up to 20 realms and 1 million users. If your use case is uncommon or you plan to scale beyond that, our system is designed to scale up with your needs. Our plans scale linearly with resource demands beyond our minimums.

We will continue to support a robust Free tier.

What's next? (psst... Global clusters)​

Many of our on-prem, suppport customers with large use cases asked us to build out a solution for massive-scale, fault-tolerant, multi-region use cases. One of the great parts of building support for Keycloak's existing storage system for CockroacDB is that we've been able to explore use cases that were previously impossible using the standard Keycloak distribution, or required complex, error-prone configurations. For use cases with these requirements, plus global proximity to users and regional failover, we built global clusters, backed by CockroachDB multi-region database, for which we are now in beta.

These clusters provide a minimum of 3 global regions, with 3 instances of Phase Two enhanced Keycloak per region. Global server load balancing provides geographic region affinity and failover to connect your users with the closest, available instances.

There will be two price tiers for global clusters, depending on your use of our shared CockroachDB clusters, or your own dedicated clusters. We expect to launch general availability of global clusters later in Q3 2023.

Please contact sales@phasetwo.io to talk to us about your global cluster use case.

Brand is important to modern SaaS companies, and nowhere is that more apparent than at the front door: the login experience. Unfortunately, the default design of the Keycloak login experience has a "face only a mother could love".

In order to allow customers to customize that experience, we've extended the default Keycloak theming functionality to allow you to easily customize the login pages from the admin console. This eliminates the need to package and deploy a custom theme, and allows fast iteration without restart.

Simple customization​

If you're in a hurry, logo and color customization can be achieved by adding your logo's URL and three color choices. These are available in the General and Login tabs of the Styles section.

In order for these setting to take effect, your Realm Settings Themes must also be set to Attributes for the Login theme type

Full customization using CSS​

Many of you will have more stringent branding requirements. For this, you can override the styles of the default Keycloak login theme. To discover the base styles that are available using this theme, we recommend

Note that using CSS overrides will cause the colors from simple customization not to work.

In order to load your CSS, paste it into the "CSS" field in the Login tab of the Styles section.

This CSS will be the last CSS loaded, overridding the styles in the default keycloak login theme.

References:

• Keycloak login CSS - The default CSS for the keycloak login theme.
• Patternfly 4 - The styling library used by the theme.

CSS Examples​

To get you started with some ideas, we've created 3 example login themes that were done by overridding the CSS. These are free of license restriction, so feel free to download, use and customize the CSS at the links with the example images.

• Consumer - CSS

• Enterprise - CSS

• SaaS - CSS

Images and other assets​

You'll notice that images, icons and fonts not found in the standard Keycloak themes are used. These are referenced by URL in the CSS. For example, if you are used to loading a custom font in the <head> of your HTML, it is possible to do it in CSS using @import:

@import url("https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@300;400;500;600;700&family=Lexend+Deca:wght@300;400;500;600;700&family=Lexend:wght@300;400;500;600;700&family=Work+Sans:wght@300;400;500;600;700&display=swap");

And background and other images can be referenced by their full URL using url(...):

.login-pf body {
  background-image: url("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2-inc/keycloak-themes/main/examples/saas/assets/SaaS%20BG.webp");
}

Success!​

As always, our success is based on the success of our customers. We hope this extension and guide has helped you update the default Keycloak login branding to match that of your needs. If you have suggestions for further improvement of this feature, please reach out on GitHub!

tl;dr​

We’ve changed the license of our core extensions from the AGPL v3 to the Elastic License v2. We wanted to share why we made this change and what it means for our customers and community.

Why?​

From our earliest stages, Phase Two has been built as a set of extensions to Keycloak. We have made a commitment that source code for our core exetensions will always be available so that our customers can migrate to their own deployment, while maintaining the extension functionality provided by Phase Two.

As our product matured and found a market fit, it became clear to us that our current license was failing to give our customers that guarantee, and failing to give our company the protection to ensure we could build a business and continue to invest in our extensions.

We've had some very deep conversations with customers and contributors about the future of licensing, and learned a lot about what other companies in our shoes have done. We truly appreciate all of the engagement and feedback, and have done our best to make a decision that is in the best interest of our company, customers and community.

What's allowed?​

1. Hosting and using the extensions by companies as part of their own product.
2. Derivative works that maintain the same license.

What's prohibited?​

1. Providing the extensions as a hosted or managed service. This includes bundling and distribution by companies who sell their products for on-prem and private cloud use.

We believe that the Elastic License strikes a great balance, and we're excited for our next phase of growth!

We've received a lot of support requests about the right way to set up SSO connections. We've published a 5 minute video showing you how to do it easily. Also, the script is included below in case you miss anything!

Script​

Developers have been asking for concise setup instructions for SSO. You’re here for our enterprise SSO functionality. We hear you. Here’s a quick live setup to show you how easy it is.

I’m assuming you have already created a self-serve deployment.

• Start by opening the console.
• Navigate to the Organizations tab.
• Create a new organization. In this case, set a domain when creating an organization that corresponds to the email domains you want to match to their SSO provider.
• Create a Portal Link by selecting it from the action menu of the organization. This is usually meant to be sent to the organization administrator, but in this case, we’ll open this link in an incognito window and configure the identity provider ourselves.

We’ll use the identity provider wizard to setup a SSO connection to Azure AD. I’ve sped this up a bit, but you’ll get an idea of what is happening. Depending on your setup and target identity provider, this will be different.

Now let’s secure an application and use our new SSO connection to log in. For this purpose, we’ve got a debugging application on Github you can use to quickly see how a front end application is secured and what data is shared between Phase Two and the application.

• Clone our debug-app from github, and open up the frontend folder in your favorite editor or IDE.
• Go back to the admin console and navigate to the Clients tab. Create a new client. Let’s call it frontend. This will be a public OIDC client, with localhost:3001 as the root and redirect uri.
• Get the keycloak.json from the configuration and copy it. Paste it into keycloak.json to configure your debug-app.

Before we continue, we need to configure an authentication flow that does our SSO redirect.

• Navigate to the Authentication tab, and duplicate the Browser flow.
• Add the Home IdP Discovery authenticator and move it into the position before the user forms. Configure it to not require a verified domain nor email.
• Finally, using the action menu, bind it to the browser flow.

Go back to the debug-app, and let’s try a login using an email domain that matches the one we configured.

• First, run npm i and npm start to start the debug app, and navigate to http://localhost:3001 in your browser. See that it redirects to the default login.
• Enter the email address in the new email only form.
• We are redirected to the Azure identity provider we set up.
• Log in to Azure, and then we are redirected to back to debug-app.
• Let’s take a look at the token and see the data that came over from Azure.

As a bonus, let’s map some information about the user’s organization memberships into the token in case we need to do something with that information in our application.

• Go back to the Admin UI and navigate to the Client we created.
• Select the frontend-dedicated client scope.
• Add a mapper by configuration.
• Select the Organization Role mapper and configure it as shown.
• Save the configuration.

Now let’s go back to the debug-app and reload.

• Take a look at the token. It now contains information about the organization we created.
• The user was automatically created and added as a member to the organization when we logged in through the Azure identity provider.

You now have a fully working authentication and enterprise SSO setup for your application. It took about 5 minutes!

There are a lot of guides out there, official and unofficial, for how to secure applications with Keycloak. The subject is rather broad, so it's difficult to know where to start. To begin, we'll be focusing on Keycloak's use of OpenID Connect (OIDC), and how to use that standard, along with some helpful libraries, to secure a simple but instructive application.

For the purposes of the sample, we'll actually be using two common applications, a frontend single-page application (SPA) written in JavaScript, and a backend REST API written for Node.js. The language we selected for the sample is JavaScript, but the principles apply no matter the implementation technology you choose.

What is OIDC?​

When learning about identity and access management technologies, you'll be confronted with an alphabet-soup of acronyms to learn. OIDC, or OpenID Connect is one of the most important ones for securing applications, be it browser-based, APIs, mobile or native. Our friend over at OneLogin does a great job of explaining OIDC in plain english for those that are curious.

For the purpose of this guide, it is sufficient to know that OIDC is an open authentication protocol that works on top of the OAuth 2.0 framework. OIDC allows individuals to use single sign-on (SSO) to access relying party sites using OpenID Providers (OPs), such as an email provider or social network, to authenticate their identities. It provides the application or service with information about the user, the context of their authentication, and access to their profile information.

Login flow​

A "flow" in OIDC terms is a mechanism of authenticating a user, and obtaning access tokens. The flow we'll be using in this guide is called the authorization code flow. Fortunately, the internals of the flow are not necessary to understand, as Keycloak handles the details for you.

However, it is useful to see what is going on in the login process, so that you understand your user's experience.

Setup​

We'll make an assumption for this guide that you are using a cloud deployment of Phase Two enhanced Keycloak. If you haven't already set one up, go over to the self-service launch announcement for details. You may also use your own Keycloak setup, but that setup is beyond the scope of this article.

The sample applications are available in our demo repo on Github. Clone that repo to your local machine. You'll find the applications in the frontend and backend directory, and a set of supporting files for configuration and deployment.

git clone https://github.com/p2-inc/debug-app.git
cd debug-app

Client​

Every application that Keycloak protects is considered a Client. Log into your Keycloak realm, and click on Clients in the left navigation, and click Create client.

1. Enter frontend as the Client ID and click Next
2. In the Capability config screen, keep the defaults and click Save
3. In the Access settings screen, enter the following values:
   1. http://localhost:3001/* for Valid redirect URIs
   2. + in Valid post logout redirect URIs
   3. + in Web origins
4. Click Save
5. In the upper right corner, open the Action menu and select Download adapter config. Click Download and move the file to the debug-app repo you cloned under the frontend folder.

Make a user​

Before we run the application, we need to create a user to log in. Click on Users in the left navigation, and click Add user. You only need to give the user a username and click Create. Find the Credentials tab and click Set password to give the user a password.

Running the sample apps​

Open two terminal windows and go to the directory of the repo you cloned in both. To start, run the following commands in each terminal:

Frontend:

cd frontend/
npm install
npm start

Backend:

cd backend/
npm install
KC_REALM=<your-realm-name> KC_URL=<your-keycloak-url> npm start

Be sure to replace the realm name, and the URL of your Keycloak installation (e.g. https://usw2.auth.ac/auth/).

This will install the necessary components using npm, and will start the servers for both applications. Note: the applications use ports 3001 and 3002 by default. If you have other applications running on these ports, you may have to temporarily shut them down.

Putting it all together​

Load http://localhost:3001/ in your browser. This will load the frontend application, which will be immediately redirected to the Keycloak login page. Log in with the user you created.

Once you log in, you'll see your profile, and several menu items. First click to the Access token menu item. You'll see the information from the parsed access token that was returned by Keycloak. This contains information about the user, but also claims related to the users roles and groups. This is because access tokens are meant to be read and validated by resource servers (i.e. our backend service).

Next, click ID token. You'll see similar information to what we saw in the access token, but limited to a standardized set of information that identifies the authentication state of the user. ID tokens are not meant for calling resource servers, and because of that, don't contain claims that are meant to be validated by backend services.

Clicking Service will call the backend service. You'll see a message that indicates the frontend called the backend, passing the access token, and was authorized to access a secured service.

You can also try the built-in Keycloak Account Management console by clicking Account, which gives the user a simple way to manage their information that is stored in Keycloak. It is not necessary to use this with your applications, as you may choose to build it in to your app. However, it's a good tool to have out of the box.

Finally, clicking Logout will take you back to the login page. This is actually sending you to the frontend's initial page, which is redirecting you to the login page as its default behavior.

What just happened?​

There's a lot that goes into implementation of the OIDC flow we used to secure our sample applications. Part of the reason to use Keycloak is the mature implementation and client libraries that make protecting applications in a secure way almost trivial.

We encourage you to look at the source in the sample applications (specifically frontend/app.js and backend/app.js) and observe how the Keycloak client libraries are used to secure these applications. This will be a good place to start when you are working on securing your own applications.

Your application​

Another incredible advantage to using standards like OIDC is that you are not constrained to using Keycloak libraries. Because your applications may not be written in JavaScript also, it's easy to use other language OIDC client libraries. We maintain a list of OIDC libraries, and the OpenID Foundation also maintains lists of certified and uncertified implementations

Today you saw how to quickly secure an application using Keycloak, and learned more about the underlying OIDC standards. We look forward to seeing what you build!