LinkedIn Authenticator Plug-in

This project provides an opens source LinkedIn Authenticator plug-in for the Curity Identity Server. This allows an administrator to add functionality to Curity which will then enable end users to login using their LinkedIn credentials. The app that integrates with Curity may also be configured to receive the LinkedIn access token and refresh token, allowing it to manage resources in LinkedIn.

System Requirements

• Curity Identity Server 7.1.0 and its system requirements

Requirements for Building from Source

• Maven 3
• Java SDK 17 or later

Compiling the Plug-in from Source

The source is very easy to compile. To do so from a shell, issue this command: mvn package.

Installation

To install this plug-in, either download a binary version available from the releases section of this project's GitHub repository or compile it from source (as described above). If you compiled the plug-in from source, the package will be placed in the target subdirectory. The resulting JAR file or the one downloaded from GitHub needs to placed in the directory ${IDSVR_HOME}/usr/share/plugins/linkedin. (The name of the last directory, linkedin, which is the plug-in group, is arbitrary and can be anything.) After doing so, the plug-in will become available as soon as the node is restarted.

Note

The JAR file needs to be deployed to each run-time node and the admin node. For simple test deployments where the admin node is a run-time node, the JAR file only needs to be copied to one location.

For a more detailed explanation of installing plug-ins, refer to the Curity developer guide.

Creating an App in LinkedIn

As described in the LinkedIn documentation, you can create apps that use the LinkedIn APIs as shown in the following figure:

Fill in all the required information as shown in above image.

When you view the app's configuration after creating it, you'll find the Client ID and Client Secret. These will be needed later when configuring the plug-in in Curity.

LinkedIn will also display the Authorized Redirect URLs in the new app's configuration. One of these need to match the yet-to-be-created LinkedIn authenticator instance in Curity. The default will not work, and, if used, will result in an error. This should be updated to some URL that follows the pattern $baseUrl/$authenticationEndpointPath/$linkedinAuthnticatorId/callback, where each of these URI components has the following meaning:

URI Component	Meaning
baseUrl	The base URL of the server (defined on the System --> General page of the admin GUI). If this value is not set, then the server scheme, name, and port should be used (e.g., https://localhost:8443).
authenticationEndpointPath	The path of the authentication endpoint. In the admin GUI, this is located in the authentication profile's Endpoints tab for the endpoint that has the type auth-authentication.
linkedinAuthenticatorId	This is the name given to the LinkedIn authenticator when defining it (e.g., linkedin1).

You must enable atleast one scope r_basicprofile as shown in above image.

It could be helpful to also enable additional scopes. Scopes are the LinkedIn-related rights or permissions that the app is requesting. If the final application (not Curity, but the downstream app) is going to perform actions using the LinkedIn API, additional scopes probably should be enabled. Refer to the LinkedIn documentation on scopes for an explanation of those that can be enabled and what they allow.

Warning

If the app configuration in LinkedIn does not allow a certain scope (e.g., the Read Email Address scope) but that scope is enabled in the authenticator in Curity, a server error will result. For this reason, it is important to align these two configurations or not to define any when configuring the plug-in in Curity.

Creating a LinkedIn Authenticator in Curity

The easiest way to configure a new LinkedIn authenticator is using the Curity admin UI. The configuration for this can be downloaded as XML or CLI commands later, so only the steps to do this in the GUI will be described.

1. Go to the Authenticators page of the authentication profile wherein the authenticator instance should be created.

2. Click the New Authenticator button.

3. Enter a name (e.g., linkedin1). This name needs to match the URI component in the callback URI set in the LinkedIn app.

4. For the type, pick the LinkedIn option:

   

5. On the next page, you can define all of the standard authenticator configuration options like any previous authenticator that should run, the resulting ACR, transformers that should executed, etc. At the bottom of the configuration page, the LinkedIn-specific options can be found.

   The LinkedIn-specific configuration is generated dynamically based on the configuration model defined in the Java interface.

6. Certain required and optional configuration settings may be provided. One of these is the HTTP Client setting. This is the HTTP client that will be used to communicate with the LinkedIn OAuth server's token and user info endpoints. To define this, do the following:

   1. click the Facilities button at the top-right of the screen.

   2. Next to HTTP, click New.

   3. Enter some name (e.g., linkedinClient).

      

7. Back in the LinkedIn authenticator instance that you started to define, select the new HTTP client from the dropdown.

   

8. In the Client ID textfield, enter the Client ID from the LinkedIn client app.

9. Also enter the matching Client Secret.

10. If you wish to limit the scopes that Curity will request of LinkedIn, toggle on the desired scopes (e.g., Read Email Address or Manage Company Page).

Once all of these changes are made, they will be staged, but not committed (i.e., not running). To make them active, click the Commit menu option in the Changes menu. Optionally enter a comment in the Deploy Changes dialogue and click OK.

Once the configuration is committed and running, the authenticator can be used like any other.

License

This plugin and its associated documentation is listed under the Apache 2 license.

More Information

Please visit curity.io for more information about the Curity Identity Server.

Copyright (C) 2017 Curity AB.