authz-keycloak

tip

Although this Plugin was developed to work with Keycloak, it should work with any OAuth/OIDC and UMA compliant identity providers as well.

Refer to Authorization Services Guide for more information on Keycloak.

Attributes

NOTE: encrypt_fields = {"client_secret"} is also defined in the schema, which means that the field will be stored encrypted in etcd. See encrypted storage fields.

It is recommended to use the discovery attribute as the authz-keycloak Plugin can discover the Keycloak API endpoints from it.

If set, the token_endpoint and resource_registration_endpoint will override the values obtained from the discovery document.

Client ID and secret

The Plugin needs the client_id attribute for identification and to specify the context in which to evaluate permissions when interacting with Keycloak.

If the lazy_load_paths attribute is set to true, then the Plugin additionally needs to obtain an access token for itself from Keycloak. In such cases, if the client access to Keycloak is confidential, you need to configure the client_secret attribute.

The policy_enforcement_mode attribute specifies how policies are enforced when processing authorization requests sent to the server.

ENFORCING mode

Requests are denied by default even when there is no policy associated with a resource.

The policy_enforcement_mode is set to ENFORCING by default.

PERMISSIVE mode

Requests are allowed when there is no policy associated with a given resource.

Permissions

If the lazy_load_paths attribute is set to false, the permissions are taken from the permissions attribute. Each entry in permissions needs to be formatted as expected by the token endpoint’s permission parameter. See .

note

A valid permission can be a single resource or a resource paired with on or more scopes.

If the lazy_load_paths attribute is set to true, the request URI is resolved to one or more resources configured in Keycloak using the resource registration endpoint. The resolved resources are used as the permissions to check.

note

This requires the Plugin to obtain a separate access token for itself from the token endpoint. So, make sure to set the option in the client settings in Keycloak.

Also make sure that the issued access token contains the resource_access claim with the uma_protection role to ensure that the Plugin is able to query resources through the Protection API.

The http_method_as_scope is often used together with lazy_load_paths but can also be used with a static permission list.

If the http_method_as_scope attribute is set to true, the Plugin maps the request’s HTTP method to the scope with the same name. The scope is then added to every permission to check.

If the lazy_load_paths attribute is set to false, the Plugin adds the mapped scope to any of the static permissions configured in the permissions attribute—even if they contain on or more scopes already.

Generating a token using password grant

To generate a token using password grant, you can set the value of the password_grant_token_generation_incoming_uri attribute.

If the incoming URI matches the configured attribute and the request method is POST, a token is generated using the token_endpoint.

You also need to add application/x-www-form-urlencoded as Content-Type header and username and password as parameters.

The example below shows how you can enable the authz-keycloak Plugin on a specific Route. ${realm} represents the realm name in Keycloak.

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/5 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "uri": "/get",
    "plugins": {
        "authz-keycloak": {
            "token_endpoint": "http://127.0.0.1:8090/auth/realms/${realm}/protocol/openid-connect/token",
            "client_id": "Client ID"
        }
    },
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:8080": 1
    }
}'

Example usage

Once you have enabled the Plugin on a Route you can use it.

First, you have to get the JWT token from Keycloak:

Now you can make requests with the obtained JWT token:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/get -H 'Authorization: Bearer {JWT Token}'

To learn more about how you can integrate authorization policies into your API workflows you can checkout the unit test authz-keycloak.t.

Run the following Docker image and go to http://localhost:8090 to view the associated policies for the unit tests.

The image below shows how the policies are configured in the Keycloak server:

To disable the authz-keycloak Plugin, you can delete the corresponding JSON configuration from the Plugin configuration. APISIX will automatically reload and you do not have to restart for this to take effect.

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/5 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
    "uri": "/get",
    "plugins": {
    },
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:8080": 1
        }
    }
}'

Plugin roadmap

• To support reading scope and configurations from the Keycloak JSON file.