Skip to content

User guide: Redirecting to a login page

Customize response status code and headers on failed requests to redirect users of a web application protected with Authorino to a login page instead of a 401 Unauthorized.

Authorino capabilities featured in this guide:

Authorino's default response status codes, messages and headers for unauthenticated (401) and unauthorized (403) requests can be customized with static values and values fetched from the Authorization JSON.

Check out as well the user guides about HTTP "Basic" Authentication (RFC 7235) and OpenID Connect Discovery and authentication with JWTs.

For further details about Authorino features in general, check the docs.


Requirements

  • Kubernetes server with permissions to install cluster-scoped resources (operator, CRDs and RBAC)

If you do not own a Kubernetes server already and just want to try out the steps in this guide, you can create a local containerized cluster by executing the command below. In this case, the main requirement is having Kind installed, with either Docker or Podman.

kind create cluster --name authorino-tutorial


The next steps walk you through installing Authorino, deploying and configuring a sample web application called Matrix Quotes to be protected by the authorization service.

Using Kuadrant

If you are a user of Kuadrant and already have your workload cluster configured and sample service application deployed, as well as your Gateway API network resources applied to route traffic to your service, skip straight to step ❺.

At step ❺, instead of creating an AuthConfig custom resource, create a Kuadrant AuthPolicy one. The schema of the AuthConfig's spec matches the one of the AuthPolicy's, except spec.host, which is not available in the Kuadrant AuthPolicy. Host names in a Kuadrant AuthPolicy are inferred automatically from the Kubernetes network object referred in spec.targetRef and route selectors declared in the policy.

For more about using Kuadrant to enforce authorization, check out Kuadrant auth.


❶ Install the Authorino Operator (cluster admin required)

The following command will install the Authorino Operator in the Kubernetes cluster. The operator manages instances of the Authorino authorization service.

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kuadrant/authorino-operator/main/utils/install.sh | bash -s

❷ Deploy Authorino

The following command will request an instance of Authorino as a separate service1 that watches for AuthConfig resources in the default namespace2, with TLS disabled3.

kubectl apply -f -<<EOF
apiVersion: operator.authorino.kuadrant.io/v1beta1
kind: Authorino
metadata:
  name: authorino
spec:
  listener:
    tls:
      enabled: false
  oidcServer:
    tls:
      enabled: false
EOF

❸ Deploy the Matrix Quotes web application

The Matrix Quotes is a static web application that contains quotes from the film The Matrix.

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/matrix-quotes/matrix-quotes-deploy.yaml

❹ Setup Envoy

The following bundle from the Authorino examples deploys the Envoy proxy and configuration to wire up the Matrix Quotes webapp behind the reverse-proxy, with external authorization enabled with the Authorino instance.4

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/matrix-quotes/envoy-deploy.yaml

The command above creates an Ingress with host name matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io. If you are using a local Kubernetes cluster created with Kind, forward requests from your local port 8000 to the Envoy service running inside the cluster:

kubectl port-forward deployment/envoy 8000:8000 2>&1 >/dev/null &

❺ Create an AuthConfig

Create an Authorino AuthConfig custom resource declaring the auth rules to be enforced:

Kuadrant users – Remember to create an AuthPolicy instead of an AuthConfig. For more, see Kuadrant auth.
kubectl apply -f -<<EOF
apiVersion: authorino.kuadrant.io/v1beta3
kind: AuthConfig
metadata:
  name: matrix-quotes-protection
spec:
  hosts:

  - matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io
  authentication:
    "browser-users":
      apiKey:
        selector:
          matchLabels:
            group: users
      credentials:
        cookie:
          name: TOKEN
    "http-basic-auth":
      apiKey:
        selector:
          matchLabels:
            group: users
      credentials:
        authorizationHeader:
          prefix: Basic
  response:
    unauthenticated:
      code: 302
      headers:
        "Location":
          selector: "http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/login.html?redirect_to={request.path}"
EOF

Check out the docs for information about the common feature JSON paths for reading from the Authorization JSON.

❻ Create an API key

kubectl apply -f -<<EOF
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: user-credential-1
  labels:
    authorino.kuadrant.io/managed-by: authorino
    group: users
stringData:
  api_key: am9objpw # john:p
type: Opaque
EOF

❼ Consume the application

On a web browser, navigate to http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000.

Click on the cards to read quotes from characters of the movie. You should be redirected to login page.

Log in using John's credentials:

  • Username: john
  • Password: p

Click again on the cards and check that now you are able to access the inner pages.

You can also consume a protected endpoint of the application using HTTP Basic Authentication:

curl -u john:p http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/neo.html
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

❽ (Optional) Modify the AuthConfig to authenticate with OIDC

Setup a Keycloak server

Deploy a Keycloak server preloaded with a realm named kuadrant:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/keycloak/keycloak-deploy.yaml

Resolve local Keycloak domain so it can be accessed from the local host and inside the cluster with the name: (This will be needed to redirect to Keycloak's login page and at the same time validate issued tokens.)

echo '127.0.0.1 keycloak' >> /etc/hosts

Forward local requests to the instance of Keycloak running in the cluster:

kubectl port-forward deployment/keycloak 8080:8080 2>&1 >/dev/null &

Create a client:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $(curl http://keycloak:8080/realms/master/protocol/openid-connect/token -s -d 'grant_type=password' -d 'client_id=admin-cli' -d 'username=admin' -d 'password=p' | jq -r .access_token)" \
     -H 'Content-type: application/json' \
     -d '{ "name": "matrix-quotes", "clientId": "matrix-quotes", "publicClient": true, "redirectUris": ["http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/auth*"], "enabled": true }' \
     http://keycloak:8080/admin/realms/kuadrant/clients

Reconfigure the Matrix Quotes app to use Keycloak's login page

kubectl set env deployment/matrix-quotes KEYCLOAK_REALM=http://keycloak:8080/realms/kuadrant CLIENT_ID=matrix-quotes

Apply the changes to the AuthConfig

kubectl apply -f -<<EOF
apiVersion: authorino.kuadrant.io/v1beta3
kind: AuthConfig
metadata:
  name: matrix-quotes-protection
spec:
  hosts:

  - matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io
  authentication:
    "idp-users":
      jwt:
        issuerUrl: http://keycloak:8080/realms/kuadrant
      credentials:
        cookie:
          name: TOKEN
  response:
    unauthenticated:
      code: 302
      headers:
        "Location":
          selector: "http://keycloak:8080/realms/kuadrant/protocol/openid-connect/auth?client_id=matrix-quotes&redirect_uri=http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/auth?redirect_to={request.path}&scope=openid&response_type=code"
EOF

Consume the application again

Refresh the browser window or navigate again to http://matrix-quotes.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000.

Click on the cards to read quotes from characters of the movie. You should be redirected to login page this time served by the Keycloak server.

Log in as Jane (a user of the Keycloak realm):

  • Username: jane
  • Password: p

Click again on the cards and check that now you are able to access the inner pages.

Cleanup

If you have started a Kubernetes cluster locally with Kind to try this user guide, delete it by running:

kind delete cluster --name authorino-tutorial

Otherwise, delete the resources created in each step:

kubectl delete secret/user-credential-1
kubectl delete authconfig/matrix-quotes-protection
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/envoy/envoy-notls-deploy.yaml
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/matrix-quotes/matrix-quotes-deploy.yaml
kubectl delete authorino/authorino
kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kuadrant/authorino-examples/main/keycloak/keycloak-deploy.yaml

To uninstall the Authorino Operator and manifests (CRDs, RBAC, etc), run:

kubectl delete -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Kuadrant/authorino-operator/main/config/deploy/manifests.yaml

  1. In contrast to a dedicated sidecar of the protected service and other architectures. Check out Architecture > Topologies for all options. 

  2. namespaced reconciliation mode. See Cluster-wide vs. Namespaced instances

  3. For other variants and deployment options, check out Getting Started, as well as the Authorino CRD specification. 

  4. For details and instructions to setup Envoy manually, see Protect a service > Setup Envoy in the Getting Started page. If you are running your ingress gateway in Kubernetes and wants to avoid setting up and configuring your proxy manually, check out Kuadrant