Configure OpenID Connect with ACL authorization

This is a Konnect tutorial. If you don’t have a Konnect account, you can get started quickly with our onboarding wizard.

1. The following Konnect items are required to complete this tutorial:

   • Personal access token (PAT): Create a new personal access token by opening the Konnect PAT page and selecting Generate Token.
   • Control Plane Name: You can use an existing Control Plane or create a new one to use for this tutorial.
   • Konnect Proxy URL: By default, a self-hosted Data Plane uses http://localhost:8000. You can set up Data Plane nodes for your Control Plane from the Gateway Manager in Konnect.

2. Set the personal access token, the Control Plane name, the Control Plane URL, and the Konnect proxy URL as environment variables:

    export DECK_KONNECT_TOKEN='YOUR KONNECT TOKEN'
    export DECK_KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_NAME='YOUR CONTROL PLANE NAME'
    export KONNECT_CONTROL_PLANE_URL=https://us.api.konghq.com
    export KONNECT_PROXY_URL='KONNECT PROXY URL'
   

This tutorial requires Kong Gateway Enterprise. If you don’t have Kong Gateway set up yet, you can use the quickstart script with an enterprise license to get an instance of Kong Gateway running almost instantly.

1. Export your license to an environment variable:

    export KONG_LICENSE_DATA='LICENSE-CONTENTS-GO-HERE'
   

2. Run the quickstart script:

    curl -Ls https://get.konghq.com/quickstart | bash -s -- -e KONG_LICENSE_DATA 
   

   Once Kong Gateway is ready, you will see the following message:

    Kong Gateway Ready
   

decK is a CLI tool for managing Kong Gateway declaratively with state files. To complete this tutorial you will first need to install decK.

For this tutorial, you’ll need Kong Gateway entities, like Gateway Services and Routes, pre-configured. These entities are essential for Kong Gateway to function but installing them isn’t the focus of this guide. Follow these steps to pre-configure them:

1. Run the following command:

   echo '
   _format_version: "3.0"
   services:
     - name: example-service
       url: http://httpbin.konghq.com/anything
   routes:
     - name: example-route
       paths:
       - "/anything"
       service:
         name: example-service
   ' | deck gateway apply -
   

To learn more about entities, you can read our entities documentation.

This tutorial requires an identity provider (IdP). If you don’t have one, you can use Keycloak. The steps will be similar in other standard identity providers.

Create a client

1. Install Keycloak (version 26 or later) on your platform.

   For example, you can use the Keycloak Docker image:

    docker run -p 8080:8080 \
      -e KC_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_USERNAME=admin \
      -e KC_BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin \
      quay.io/keycloak/keycloak start-dev
   

2. Open the admin console.

   The default URL of the console is http://$YOUR_KEYCLOAK_HOST:8080/admin/master/console/.

3. In the sidebar, open Clients, then click Create client.
4. Configure the client:

Set up keys and credentials

1. In your client, open the Credentials tab.
2. Set Client Authenticator to Client ID and Secret.
3. Copy the Client Secret.
4. Switch to the Users menu and add a user.
5. Open the user’s Credentials tab and add a password. Be sure to disable Temporary Password.

In this guide, we’re going to use an example user named alex with the password doe.

Export to environment variables

Export your client secret, client ID, and issuer URL to environment variables so that you can pass them more securely. For example:

export DECK_ISSUER=http://host.docker.internal:8080/realms/master
export DECK_CLIENT_ID=kong
export DECK_CLIENT_SECRET=UNT3GPzCKI7zUbhAmFSUGbj4wmiBDGiW