Account (Self-Service) Registration

CAS provides a modest workflow to handle self-service account registration. Once enabled, the account registration workflow allows users to register accounts with CAS to:

  • Provide an initial, customizable set of details such as first name, last name, email to kickstart the account creation request.
  • Receive an activation link with instructions via email or text message to verify the account creation request.
  • Finalize the account creation request, choose a password, security questions, etc.
  • Ultimately, submit the account registration request to an identity manager system for provisioning and follow-up processes.
:information_source: Usage Note

CAS is NOT, as of this writing, an identity management solution and does not intend to provide features or support capabilities that are typically found in such systems, such as complex provisioning workflows, account lifecycle management, inbound/outbound attribute mappings, etc. While all open-source software can be customized to no end, the capabilities described here ultimately expect one or more systems of record to hold and manage user accounts.

Account registration and sign-up functionality is enabled by including the following dependency in the WAR overlay:



1
2
3
4
5



<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apereo.cas</groupId>
    <artifactId>cas-server-support-account-mgmt</artifactId>
    <version>${cas.version}</version>
</dependency>





1



implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-account-mgmt:${project.'cas.version'}"





1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9



dependencyManagement {
    imports {
        mavenBom "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-bom:${project.'cas.version'}"
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-account-mgmt"
}





1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10



dependencies {
    /*
        The following platform references should be included automatically and are listed here for reference only.

        implementation enforcedPlatform("org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-bom:${project.'cas.version'}")
        implementation platform(org.springframework.boot.gradle.plugin.SpringBootPlugin.BOM_COORDINATES)
        
    */
    implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-account-mgmt"
}

Configuration

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. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

This CAS feature is able to accept signing and encryption crypto keys. In most scenarios if keys are not provided, CAS will auto-generate them. The following instructions apply if you wish to manually and beforehand create the signing and encryption keys.

Note that if you are asked to create a JWK of a certain size for the key, you are to use the following set of commands to generate the token:



1
2



wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apereo/cas/master/etc/jwk-gen.jar
java -jar jwk-gen.jar -t oct -s [size]

The outcome would be similar to:



1
2
3
4
5



{
  "kty": "oct",
  "kid": "...",
  "k": "..."
}

The generated value for k needs to be assigned to the relevant CAS settings. Note that keys generated via the above algorithm are processed by CAS using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm which is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Password Policy Strategies

If the password policy strategy is to be handed off to a Groovy script, the outline of the script may be as follows:



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13



import java.util.*
import org.ldaptive.auth.*
import org.apereo.cas.*
import org.apereo.cas.authentication.*
import org.apereo.cas.authentication.support.*

List<MessageDescriptor> run(final Object... args) {
    def (response,configuration,logger,applicationContext) = args
    logger.info("Handling password policy [{}] via ${configuration.getAccountStateHandler()}", response)

    def accountStateHandler = configuration.getAccountStateHandler()
    return accountStateHandler.handle(response, configuration)
}

The parameters passed are as follows:

Parameter Description
response The LDAP authentication response of type org.ldaptive.auth.AuthenticationResponse
configuration The LDAP password policy configuration carrying the account state handler defined.
logger The object responsible for issuing log messages such as logger.info(...).
applicationContext The Spring ApplicationContext that allows one to interact with the runtime.

To prepare CAS to support and integrate with Apache Groovy, please review this guide.

Configuration Metadata

The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

Be Selective

This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

YAGNI

Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

Naming Convention

Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc.

: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.

Settings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

Validation

Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

Indexed Settings

CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

Account Registration Requests

The account registration request expects a number of user inputs initially to kick off the registration process. For starters, a default set of fields and inputs are expected by CAS out of the box, and as always, such details and fields can be described in metadata form using a JSON document that matches the following map:



1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14



{
  "@class" : "java.util.HashMap",
  "field-name" : {
    "@class" : "org.apereo.cas.acct.AccountRegistrationProperty",
    "name" : "field-name",
    "required" : true,
    "label" : "cas.screen.acct.label.field",
    "title" : "cas.screen.acct.title.field",
    "pattern": ".+",
    "type": "email",
    "values" : [ "java.util.ArrayList", [ "sample@gmail.com", "sample2@hotmail.com" ] ],
    "order": 0
  }
}

The following fields are supported:

Field Description
name The name of the input field to display on the registration screen.
required Whether or not this input is required. Defaults to false.
label Key to a message key in the CAS language bundles to describe the label text for this input.
title Key to a message key in the CAS language bundles to describe the title text for this input.
pattern Regular expression pattern to force and validate the acceptable pattern for the input value.
type The type of this input field (i.e. select, email, phone, text, etc.).
order The display order of this input on the screen.
values List of values to display in order, when type is set to select.
:information_source: Is it possible to...?

You must be wondering by now whether it's possible to customize the screen and include other types of fields, forms and values. In general, you should be able to use JSON metadata to describe additional fields so long as the input field's type is simple enough and supported. If you have a type that isn't supported by the existing metadata, you will need to build the input field and workflows and rules linked to it yourself as custom code.

The loading and processing of the user registration metadata and fields can be customized using the following component:



1
2
3
4



@Bean
public AccountRegistrationPropertyLoader accountMgmtRegistrationPropertyLoader() {
    return new MyAccountRegistrationPropertyLoader(resource);
}

See this guide to learn more about how to register configurations into the CAS runtime.

Account Registration Validation

The validation of registration requests can be customized using the following component:



1
2
3
4



@Bean
public AccountRegistrationRequestValidator accountMgmtRegistrationRequestValidator() {
    return new MyAccountRegistrationRequestValidator();
}

See this guide to learn more about how to register configurations into the CAS runtime.

Communication Strategy

Account creation requests are expected to be verified using a dedicated activation link that can be shared with the user using mail or text messages. The activation link is expected to remain valid for a configurable period of time.

To learn more about available options, please see this guide or this guide, or this guide.

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. In other words, you should only include this field in your configuration if you need to modify the default value or if you need to turn on the feature controlled by the setting.

The following settings may also need to be defined to describe the mail server settings:

Configuration Metadata

The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

Be Selective

This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

YAGNI

Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

Naming Convention

Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc.

: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.

Settings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

Validation

Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

Indexed Settings

CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

Username Extraction

By default, registration requests allow the user to choose a username, Construction and extraction of a usename field from the registration request can be customized using the following component:



1
2
3
4



@Bean
public AccountRegistrationUsernameBuilder accountRegistrationUsernameBuilder() {
    return new MyAccountRegistrationUsernameBuilder();
}

See this guide to learn more about how to register configurations into the CAS runtime.