OAuth
OAuth is an open standard for access delegation. OAuth can be used to authorize users of your application by using external providers, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and so on.
The oauth
provider supports the authorization code flow. You can configure OAuth parameters in one place, and Ktor will automatically make a request to a specified authorization server with the necessary parameters.
Add dependencies
To use OAuth
, you need to include the ktor-server-auth
artifact in the build script:
OAuth authorization flow
The OAuth authorization flow in a Ktor application might look as follows:
A user opens a login page in a Ktor application.
Ktor makes an automatic redirect to the authorization page for a specific provider and passes the necessary parameters:
a client ID used to access APIs of the selected provider;
a callback or redirect URL specifying a Ktor application page that will be opened after authorization is completed;
scopes of third-party resources required for a Ktor application;
a grant type used to get an access token (Authorization Code in our case);
a
state
parameter used to mitigate CSRF attacks and redirect users;optional parameters specific for a certain provider.
The authorization page shows a consent screen with the level of permissions required for a Ktor application. These permissions depend on scopes passed in step 2.
If a user approves the requested permissions, the authorization server redirects back to a redirect URL and sends the authorization code.
Ktor makes one more automatic request to the specified access token URL and passes the following parameters:
an authorization code;
a client ID and client secret.
The authorization server returns an access token.
A client can now use a token to make a request to the required service of the selected provider. In most cases, a token will be sent in the
Authorization
header using theBearer
schema.A service validates a token, uses its scope for authorization, and returns the requested data.
Install OAuth
To install the oauth
authentication provider, call the oauth function inside the install
block:
You can optionally specify a provider name.
Configure OAuth
This section demonstrates how to configure the oauth
provider for authorizing users of your application using Google. You can find the complete runnable example here: auth-oauth-google.
Prerequisites: Create authorization credentials
To access Google APIs, you need to create authorization credentials in the Google Cloud Console.
Open the Credentials page in the Google Cloud Console.
Click CREATE CREDENTIALS and choose
OAuth client ID
.Choose
Web application
from the dropdown.Specify the following settings:
Authorised JavaScript origins:
http://localhost:8080
.Authorised redirect URIs:
http://localhost:8080/callback
. In Ktor, the urlProvider property is used to specify a redirect route that will be opened when authorization is completed.
Click CREATE. In the invoked dialog, copy the created client ID and client secret that will be used to configure the
oauth
provider.
Step 1: Create the HTTP client
Before configuring the oauth
provider, you need to create the HttpClient that will be used by the server to make requests to the OAuth server. The ContentNegotiation client plugin with the JSON serializer is required to deserialize received JSON data after a request to the API.
The client instance is passed to the main
module function to have the capability to create a separate client instance in a server test.
Step 2: Configure the OAuth provider
The code snippet below shows how to create and configure the oauth
provider with the auth-oauth-google
name.
The
urlProvider
specifies a redirect route that will be opened when authorization is completed.providerLookup
allows you to specify OAuth settings for a required provider. These settings are represented by the OAuthServerSettings class and allow Ktor to make automatic requests to the OAuth server.The
client
property specifies the HttpClient used by Ktor to make requests to the OAuth server.
Step 3: Add a login route
After configuring the oauth
provider, you need to create a protected login route inside the authenticate function that accepts the name of the oauth
provider. When Ktor receives a request to this route, it will be automatically redirected to authorizeUrl
defined in providerLookup.
A user will see the authorization page with the level of permissions required for a Ktor application. These permissions depend on defaultScopes
specified in providerLookup.
Step 4: Add a redirect route
Apart from the login route, you need to create a redirect route that will be invoked after authorization is completed. The address of this route was specified using the urlProvider property.
Inside this route you can retrieve the OAuthAccessTokenResponse object using the call.principal
function. OAuthAccessTokenResponse
allows you to access a token and other parameters returned by the OAuth server.
In this example, the following actions are performed after receiving a token:
a token is saved to a cookie session, whose content can be accessed inside other routes;
a user is redirected to the next route where a request to Google API is made.
Step 5: Make a request to API
After receiving a token inside the redirect route and saving it to a session, you can make the request to external APIs using this token. The code snippet below shows how to use the HttpClient to make such a request and get a user's information by sending this token in the Authorization
header.
You can find the complete runnable example here: auth-oauth-google.