Securing My Stack: Features and Experience Integrating Asgardeo, Ballerina, and Choreo

Crafting a secure microservice architecture can feel like a complex undertaking, but choosing the right Identity Provider (IDP) can smooth the path. In this project, Asgardeo stepped up as the chosen IDP, handling the intricacies of OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC) with a cloud-native approach. One key takeaway: Asgardeo's SPA setup is remarkably intuitive. By simply defining the application as an SPA within the Asgardeo Console, the Authorization Code flow with PKCE is automatically enabled, offering immediate security against code interception attacks without manual configuration.

Integrating authentication into the React frontend was streamlined using the Asgardeo React SDK. The useAuthContext hook provides easy access to the user's authentication state. A crucial tip learned was the importance of fetching the access token using the SDK's asynchronous getAccessToken() function right before making API calls. This ensures the Authorization: Bearer <token> header always contains a valid token, preventing potential race conditions. Here's an example of how to reliably fetch the token: const fetchData = async () => { const token = await getAccessToken(); const apiResponse = await fetch(apiUrl, { headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${token}` } }); // ... handle response }

Finally, the journey revealed a critical insight into JWT (JSON Web Token) validation. While documentation suggested the Issuer (iss) claim in the JWT would contain the base URL, Asgardeo issued tokens with the full token endpoint URL. This required adapting both the API Gateway (Choreo) and the Ballerina service to trust the full endpoint URL, highlighting the importance of inspecting the actual token payload and configuring validators accordingly. This adaptability proved essential in resolving a potential JWT Validator deadlock, reinforcing the need for careful observation and configuration when working with security tokens.

📰 Original article: https://dev.to/maheshadinu/securing-my-stack-features-and-experience-integrating-asgardeo-ballerina-and-choreo-43dm

This content has been curated and summarized for Code Crafts readers.