User guide: OpenID Connect (OIDC) and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with Authorino and Keycloak¶

Combine OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) authorization rules leveraging Keycloak and Authorino working together.

In this user guide, you will learn via example how to implement a simple Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) system to protect endpoints of an API, with roles assigned to users of an Identity Provider (Keycloak) and carried within the access tokens as JSON Web Token (JWT) claims. Users authenticate with the IdP via OAuth2/OIDC flow and get their access tokens verified and validated by Authorino on every request. Moreover, Authorino reads the role bindings of the user and enforces the proper RBAC rules based upon the context.

Authorino capabilities featured in this guide:

Identity verification & authentication → JWT verification
Authorization → Pattern-matching authorization

Check out as well the user guides about OpenID Connect Discovery and authentication with JWTs and Simple pattern-matching authorization policies.

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)
Identity Provider (IdP) that implements OpenID Connect authentication and OpenID Connect Discovery (e.g. Keycloak)
jq, to extract parts of JSON responses

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

Deploy the identity provider and authentication server by executing the command below. For the examples in this guide, we are going to use a Keycloak server preloaded with all required realm settings.

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

The next steps walk you through installing Authorino, deploying and configuring a sample service called Talker API 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 Talker API¶

The Talker API is a simple HTTP service that echoes back in the response whatever it gets in the request. We will use it in this guide as the sample service to be protected by Authorino.

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

❹ Setup Envoy¶

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

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

The command above creates an Ingress with host name talker-api.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.

In this example, the Keycloak realm defines a few users and 2 realm roles: 'member' and 'admin'. When users authenticate to the Keycloak server by any of the supported OAuth2/OIDC flows, Keycloak adds to the access token JWT a claim "realm_access": { "roles": array } that holds the list of roles assigned to the user. Authorino will verify the JWT on requests to the API and read from that claim to enforce the following RBAC rules:

Path	Method	Role
/resources[/*]	GET / POST / PUT	member
/resources/{id}	DELETE	admin
/admin[/*]	*	admin

Kuadrant users – Remember to create an AuthPolicy instead of an AuthConfig. For more, see Kuadrant auth.

Apply the AuthConfig:

kubectl apply -f -<<EOF
apiVersion: authorino.kuadrant.io/v1beta2
kind: AuthConfig
metadata:
  name: talker-api-protection
spec:
  hosts:

  - talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io

  authentication:
    "keycloak-kuadrant-realm":
      jwt:
        issuerUrl: http://keycloak.keycloak.svc.cluster.local:8080/realms/kuadrant

  patterns:
    "member-role":

    - selector: auth.identity.realm_access.roles
      operator: incl
      value: member
    "admin-role":
    - selector: auth.identity.realm_access.roles
      operator: incl
      value: admin

  authorization:
    # RBAC rule: 'member' role required for requests to /resources[/*]
    "rbac-resources-api":
      when:

      - selector: context.request.http.path
        operator: matches
        value: ^/resources(/.*)?$
      patternMatching:
        patterns:
        - patternRef: member-role

    # RBAC rule: 'admin' role required for DELETE requests to /resources/{id}
    "rbac-delete-resource":
      when:

      - selector: context.request.http.path
        operator: matches
        value: ^/resources/\d+$
      - selector: context.request.http.method
        operator: eq
        value: DELETE
      patternMatching:
        patterns:
        - patternRef: admin-role

    # RBAC rule: 'admin' role required for requests to /admin[/*]
    "rbac-admin-api":
      when:

      - selector: context.request.http.path
        operator: matches
        value: ^/admin(/.*)?$
      patternMatching:
        patterns:
        - patternRef: admin-role
EOF

❻ Obtain an access token and consume the API¶

Obtain an access token and consume the API as John (member)¶

Obtain an access token with the Keycloak server for John:

The AuthConfig deployed in the previous step is suitable for validating access tokens requested inside the cluster. This is because Keycloak's iss claim added to the JWTs matches always the host used to request the token and Authorino will later try to match this host to the host that provides the OpenID Connect configuration.

Obtain an access token from within the cluster for the user John, who is assigned to the 'member' role:

ACCESS_TOKEN=$(kubectl run token --attach --rm --restart=Never -q --image=curlimages/curl -- http://keycloak.keycloak.svc.cluster.local:8080/realms/kuadrant/protocol/openid-connect/token -s -d 'grant_type=password' -d 'client_id=demo' -d 'username=john' -d 'password=p' -d 'scope=openid' | jq -r .access_token)

If your Keycloak server is reachable from outside the cluster, feel free to obtain the token directly. Make sure the host name set in the OIDC issuer endpoint in the AuthConfig matches the one used to obtain the token and is as well reachable from within the cluster.

As John, send a GET request to /resources:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/resources -i
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

As John, send a DELETE request to /resources/123:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" -X DELETE http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/resources/123 -i
# HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden

As John, send a GET request to /admin/settings:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/admin/settings -i
# HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden

Obtain an access token and consume the API as Jane (member/admin)¶

Obtain an access token from within the cluster for the user Jane, who is assigned to the 'member' and 'admin' roles:

ACCESS_TOKEN=$(kubectl run token --attach --rm --restart=Never -q --image=curlimages/curl -- http://keycloak.keycloak.svc.cluster.local:8080/realms/kuadrant/protocol/openid-connect/token -s -d 'grant_type=password' -d 'client_id=demo' -d 'username=jane' -d 'password=p' -d 'scope=openid' | jq -r .access_token)

As Jane, send a GET request to /resources:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/resources -i
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

As Jane, send a DELETE request to /resources/123:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" -X DELETE http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/resources/123 -i
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

As Jane, send a GET request to /admin/settings:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $ACCESS_TOKEN" http://talker-api.127.0.0.1.nip.io:8000/admin/settings -i
# HTTP/1.1 200 OK

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 authconfig/talker-api-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/talker-api/talker-api-deploy.yaml
kubectl delete authorino/authorino
kubectl delete namespace keycloak

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

In contrast to a dedicated sidecar of the protected service and other architectures. Check out Architecture > Topologies for all options. ↩
namespaced reconciliation mode. See Cluster-wide vs. Namespaced instances. ↩
For other variants and deployment options, check out Getting Started, as well as the Authorino CRD specification. ↩
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. ↩