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Customize the Authentication Endpoint

The authentication endpoint is the authentication URL used in authentication requests. The following sections discuss methods of customizing this endpoint for various scenarios.

Customize the authentication endpoint URL

The authentication endpoint URL is the location in your web application that contains authentication related pages.

Follow the steps below to customize the authentication endpoint URL:

  1. Add the following configurations to the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file, and change the value of the login_url parameter depending on the URL on which the web application should run. 

    [authentication.endpoints] 
login_url="/sso/login"

  2. Run the web application on the new authentication endpoint URL.

Control the request parameters going to the authentication endpoint

Additional request parameters can be added and customized for the request sent to the authentication endpoint. To customize this, add the following configurations in the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file.

[authentication.endpoint.query_params] 
filter_policy = exclude 
filter_parameters = [username]
filter_parameters = [password]

Note

In the above configuration, username and password are just given as examples. You can configure any query parameter here for your request and customize it according to your specifications.

Load tenants into the dropdown in the login page of the authentication endpoint web application

This section is useful in scenarios where there are multiple tenants used, where users can login to web applications with their credentials for their specified tenants. For instance, for a user in the test.com tenant with the username test1, the user would have to enter the full username as "[email protected]" in order to login. Enabling this feature will load all the available active tenants onto a dropdown list on the login page of the web application that the authentication endpoint points to. This means that the test1 user mentioned above can simply select the tenant he/she belongs to (test.com) from the dropdown list and only needs to enter the username (i.e., test1) in the username textbox on the login page, without having to type it with "@tenant-domain".

Configure the following to enable this feature.

  1. Add the following configuration to the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/tomcat/deployment.toml file. This is done to disable the certificate authentication on certain occasions (like when working on mobile apps). This makes two-way SSL authentication optional.

    [transport.https.properties]
clientAuth="want"

  2. Open the <IS-HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file and add the following parameter to enable the Mutual SSL Authenticator.

    [admin_console.authenticator.mutual_ssl_authenticator]
enable = true

  3. If the saml_sso_authenticator is enabled in the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file, set its priority to 0. Otherwise ignore this step.

    [admin_console.authenticator.saml_sso_authenticator]
enable = true
priority = 0

  4. Add the following configuration into the <IS-HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file.

    [tenant]
data_listener_urls = ["url1","url2"]
[tenant.domain_drop_down]
enable = true

    Note

    When configuring the data_listener_urls property in the above configuration, note the following.

    • In a clustered setup that has multiple authentication endpoint web applications hosted, list all of them under the data_listener_urls property.

    • For authentication endpoint web applications hosted outside the WSO2 Identity Server or in other nodes of a cluster, add the absolute URL within the data_listener_urls property.

  5. Restart the server using one of the following commands.

    • Windows : wso2server.bat

    • Linux/Unix : sh wso2server.sh

  6. Once the server is restarted, the authenticationendpoint.war file is deployed. The <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file has to be configured with the required values for properties. The following are the default values for the properties to be used in this file.

    [identity.auth_framework.endpoint] 
tenant_list_enabled="false"
hostname_verification_enabled="true"
mutual_ssl_username="admin"
client_keystore="wso2carbon.jks"
carbon_security_keystore_password="wso2carbon"
client_truststore="client-truststore.jks"
carbon_security_truststore_password="wso2carbon"
identity_server_service_url="https://localhost:9443"
username_header="UserName"

    Do the following updates to this configuration.

    1. Set tenant_list_enabled to true in order to enable the tenants to display as a list.

    2. For the mutual_ssl_username property, set the username that is to be used for mutual SSL authentication. This user needs to have permission to list down tenants. You can add a new username here provided that you create a user with that username and grant the following permissions to the role of the user.

      Super Admin Permissions > Manage > Monitor > Tenants > List

    3. Paths for client keystore and truststore can be relative paths or absolute paths. The default paths point to the keystore and truststore of the Identity Server itself. A new keystore can be created and used for the client if necessary. However, you must set the passwords for carbon_security_keystore_password and carbon_security_truststore_password appropriately.

    Note

    If you are hosting the autheticationendpoint.war webapp outside the Identity Server (i.e in a different Tomcat or WSO2 Application Server), then you cannot use the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file because the webapp does not have access to this file. Instead, the same property file can be found at <WEBAPP_HOME>/authenticationendpoint/WEB-INF/classes/EndpointConfig.properties.

    The following are the default values for the properties to be used in this file.

    tenantListEnabled=false
mutualSSLManagerEnabled=true
hostname.verification.enabled=true
mutual.ssl.username=admin
client.keyStore=./repository/resources/security/wso2carbon.jks
Carbon.Security.KeyStore.Password=wso2carbon
client.trustStore=./repository/resources/security/client-truststore.jks
Carbon.Security.TrustStore.Password=wso2carbon
identity.server.serviceURL=https://localhost:9443/services/
username.header=UserName
key.manager.type=SunX509
trust.manager.type=SunX509
tls.protocol=TLSv1.2
app.name=dashboard
app.password=dashboard
identity.server.origin=${carbon.protocol}://${carbon.host}:${carbon.management.port}

    In this scenario, do the following:

    • Provide the full URL to WSO2 Identity Server’s admin services endpoint in the identity.server.serviceURL property following the format below. identity.server.serviceURL=https://<ip>:<port>/services

    • Set tenantListEnabled to true in order to enable the tenants to display as a list.

    • For the mutual.ssl.username property, set the username that is to be used for mutual SSL authentication. This user needs to have permission to list down tenants. You can add a new username here provided that you create a user with that username and grant the following permissions to the role of the user.
    **Super Admin Permissions** \> **Manage** \> **Monitor** \>
**Tenants** \> **List**
    • Paths for client keystore and truststore can be relative paths or absolute paths. The default paths point to the keystore and truststore of the Identity Server itself. A new keystore can be created and used for the client if necessary. However, you must set the passwords for Carbon.Security.KeyStore.Password and Carbon.Security.TrustStore.Password appropriately.

    For more information about hosting the authentication endpoint on a different server, refer here.

  7. For mutual SSL authentication, the public certificate of the Identity Server has to be imported to the truststore of the client and the public certificate of the client has to be imported to the client-truststore of Identity Server.

    Sample commands

    The following two commands are examples if you are using the keystore and client-truststore of the Identity Server itself for the client. This is executed from the <IS_HOME>/repository/resources/security directory.

    keytool -export -alias wso2carbon -file carbon_public2.crt -keystore wso2carbon.jks -storepass wso2carbon
    keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias carbon -file carbon_public2.crt -keystore client-truststore.jks -storepass wso2carbon

    Note

    If you are not using mutual SSL authentication, you can stop the MutualSSLManager from loading the keystore by setting the mutual_ssl_manager_enabled property in the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file to false. This property is enabled by default.

    mutual_ssl_manager_enabled="false"

    Alternatively, if the authentication endpoint is hosted externally, then set the mutualSSLManagerEnabled property to false in <WEBAPP_HOME>/authenticationendpoint/WEB-INF/classes/EndpointConfig.properties file.

    mutualSSLManagerEnabled=false

    Make sure to restart the server to apply the configuration changes.

Remove the tenant list from the login page

If it is required to remove the tenant domain dropdown list in SSO Login page, follow the steps below.

  1. Shutdown the server if it is already started.

  2. Navigate to <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file.

  3. Set the tenant_list_enabled property to false. 

    [identity.auth_framework.endpoint] 
tenant_list_enabled = "false"

    Note

    Alternatively, if the authentication endpoint is hosted externally, then set the tenantListEnabled property to false in <WEBAPP_HOME>/authenticationendpoint/WEB-INF/classes/EndpointConfig.properties file.

    tenantListEnabled=false

  4. Set following parameter to false.

    [tenant.domain_drop_down]
enable = false

  5. If the MutualSSLAuthenticator is only used for the purpose of listing tenant domains in the drop down, disable it in the <IS_HOME>/repository/conf/deployment.toml file.

    [admin_console.authenticator.mutual_ssl_authenticator]
enable = false

  6. Restart the server.

Handle the browser back button and bookmarked login page

This section describes how to enhance the usability of the authentication endpoint web app with different user behavioral patterns. For example, the user may click the back button from the authenticated application or keep the endpoint login page URL bookmarked. In such situations, the user should be directed to the access URL specified for the application.

Follow the steps below to ensure that the access URL is configured for your application:

  1. Start WSO2 IS and log in to the Management Console.

  2. On the Management Console, go to Main > Identity > Service Providers, and select the service provider registered for your application.

  3. Specify the access URL of your application as shown below.

    service provider access url

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