Webflow Customization

CAS uses Spring Webflow to do script processing of login and logout protocols. Spring Web Flow builds on Spring MVC and allows implementing the “flows” of a web application. A flow encapsulates a sequence of steps that guide a user through the execution of some business task. It spans multiple HTTP requests, has state, deals with transactional data, is reusable, and may be dynamic and long-running in nature. Each flow may contain among many other settings the following major elements:

Actions: components that describe an executable task and return back a result
Transitions: Routing the flow from one state to another; Transitions may be global to the entire flow.
Views: Components that describe the presentation layer displayed back to the client
Decisions: Components that conditionally route to other areas of flow and can make logical decisions

Spring Web Flow presents CAS with a pluggable architecture where custom actions, views and decisions may be injected into the flow to account for additional use cases and processes. Note that to customize the webflow, one must possess a reasonable level of understanding of the webflow internals and injection policies. The intention of this document is NOT to describe Spring Web Flow, but merely to demonstrate how the framework is used by CAS to carry out various aspects of the protocol and business logic execution.

Webflow Session

See this guide for more info.

Webflow Auto Configuration

Most CAS modules, when declared as a dependency, attempt to autoconfigure the CAS webflow to suit their needs. This practically means that the CAS adopter would no longer have to manually massage the CAS webflow configuration, and the module automatically takes care of all required changes. While this is the default behavior, it is possible that you may want to manually handle all such changes. For doing so, you will need to disable the CAS auto-configuration of the webflow.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.}

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This
flag indicates that the presence of the setting
is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or
the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value. You should only include this field in your
configuration if you need to modify the default value.}

cas.webflow.auto-configuration.enabled=true

Whether webflow auto-configuration should be enabled.

org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.web.flow.WebflowAutoConfigurationProperties.

_{How can I configure this property?}

Configuration properties can be included and activated using the following strategies.

:information_source: Note

When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value. The only possible exception to this rule is when naming actuator endpoints; The name of the actuator endpoints (i.e. ssoSessions) MUST remain in camelCase mode.

CAS properties can be specified using the Java configuration property syntax in any and all .properties files:

cas.webflow.auto-configuration.enabled=true

This is the most common form of property configuration that is recognized by CAS, regardless of the actual property source, which might in fact be managed separately outside the CAS environment, by another system or cloud framework.

CAS properties can be specified using the YAML syntax:

cas: 
  webflow: 
    auto-configuration: 
      enabled: 

Note that YAML is very specific about structure and indentation. Be sure to verify the correctness of the final result with your YAML validator of choice.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as system properties, when the application is launched:

java -Dcas.webflow.auto-configuration.enabled="true" -jar build/libs/cas.war

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory. Note the placement of the system property which must be specified before the CAS web application is launched.

CAS properties can specified as system environment variables before the CAS web application is launched:

export CAS_WEBFLOW_AUTO_CONFIGURATION_ENABLED="true"

java -jar build/libs/cas.war

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as command-line arguments, when the application is launched:

java -jar build/libs/cas.war --cas.webflow.auto-configuration.enabled="true"

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.

cas.webflow.auto-configuration.order=0

The order in which the webflow is configured.

org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.web.flow.WebflowAutoConfigurationProperties.

_{How can I configure this property?}

Configuration properties can be included and activated using the following strategies.

:information_source: Note

CAS properties can be specified using the Java configuration property syntax in any and all .properties files:

cas.webflow.auto-configuration.order=0

CAS properties can be specified using the YAML syntax:

cas: 
  webflow: 
    auto-configuration: 
      order: 

Note that YAML is very specific about structure and indentation. Be sure to verify the correctness of the final result with your YAML validator of choice.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as system properties, when the application is launched:

java -Dcas.webflow.auto-configuration.order="0" -jar build/libs/cas.war

CAS properties can specified as system environment variables before the CAS web application is launched:

export CAS_WEBFLOW_AUTO_CONFIGURATION_ORDER="0"

java -jar build/libs/cas.war

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.

CAS properties can be passed to the CAS web application as command-line arguments, when the application is launched:

java -jar build/libs/cas.war --cas.webflow.auto-configuration.order="0"

The above example assumes that the CAS web application is packaged as cas.war with an embedded server container and can be found in the build/libs directory.