Setup keycloak

setup-keycloak.md

Keycloak setup

• install docker
• in order to run keycloak in a docker container, run the below command:

docker run -p 8080:8080 -e KEYCLOAK_ADMIN=admin -e KEYCLOAK_ADMIN_PASSWORD=admin quay.io/keycloak/keycloak:latest start-dev

If you are using podman then just replace docker with podman in above bash command

• the above command will pull latest keycloak and run it on localhost:8080
• once the container is created, we can run it from docker desktop containers from next time. this will also prevent unnecessary container duplications.
• navigate to above localhost and navigate to administration console and login as admin.

Create realm

• create a realm from master dropdown with name keycloak-react-auth

Create client

• A realm can have multiple clients. frontend application needs a client along with realm to perform login actions.

• To create a client, navigate to above realm from master dropdown.

• click on Clients in side navigation and click on Create client. This opens a wizard:

  • in 1st step, provide Client id: <hyphen-delimited-value> (in our case, React-auth)
  • keep defaults in next steps and create client.

• after client creation, navigate to Settings tab in above realm and set below things in Access Settings section:

  • Valid redirect URIs: <frontend-application-protected-url> (in our case localhost:3000/about)
  • Valid post logout redirect URIs: <frontend-application-default-url> (in our case localhost:3000/home)
  • Web origins: <frontend-application-url> (in our case localhost:3000)

Create client roles

• Each client can contain different roles which are assigned to different users. these are more like permissions that a user can have.
• to create a role: navigate to Roles tab in above client and click on Create Role. provide a hyphen-seperated value

Create realm roles

• Realm roles are super set of client roles. A realm role can contain multiple client roles.
• To create a realm role, navigate to above realm.
• click on Realm roles in side bar navigation and click on Create role.
• provide a hypen-seperated role name and save.
• to assign client roles to a given realm role, navigate to above role from the list of realm roles.
  • click on Action dropdown in top-right corner and click on Add associated roles
  • this opens a modal dialog with filter dropdown, search and list of roles
  • click on filter and select Filter by clients. this should show our client role which we created above along with defaults.
  • select our new client role and save.
• With this, we created a realm role and assigned some client roles to it.

Create a user

• A user in keycloak is associated to realm role which in turn have specific set of permissions (client roles).
• To create a user, navigate to above realm and click on Users in side bar navigation.
• Click on Add user. provide username, first name, last name and ignore email verified. save user.

Setting password

• To set up password for new user, navigate to new user from users list.
• navigate to Credentials tab and add password

Setting realm role

• To set a realm role, navigate to new user from users list.
• navigate to Role mapping tab and click on Assign role
• this opens a modal dialog with our realm role aloong with other default realm roles. select our realm role and save.
• with this, we created the user with specific role which has specific permissions.