Service Management

The CAS service management facility allows CAS server administrators to declare and configure which services (CAS clients) may make use of CAS in which ways. The core component of the service management facility is the service registry that stores one or more registered services containing metadata that drives a number of CAS behaviors.

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.

  • cas.service-registry.core.index-services=true

    • When set to true, CAS creates in-memory indexes for specific pre-chosen fields of the registered services, allowing it to find a service definition by its friendly name, client id, etc. This is particularly useful for querying operations in OAuth or OpenID Connect, as there would be no need to loop through all service definitions looking for a matching client id. The indexes allow CAS to execute a direct query on loaded service objects to find the relevant definition.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCoreProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.service-registry.core.init-default-services=true

    • Flag that indicates whether service definitions that ship with CAS by default should be included in the initialization process and imported into CAS service registry. Default service files that ship with CAS are found on the classpath inside the JsonServiceRegistryProperties#DEFAULT_LOCATION_DIRECTORY directory.

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCoreProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

  • cas.service-registry.core.init-from-json=false

    • Flag that indicates whether to initialise active service registry implementation with a set of service definitions included with CAS by default in JSON format. The initialization generally tends to find JSON service definitions from JsonServiceRegistryProperties#getLocation().

    In cases where the location points to an embedded directory or resource inside a JAR/ZIP file, such as those that might have been packaged with the CAS application as part of the build and assembly process, embedded services are first exported out into a temporary directory and then read as file-system resources. In such scenarios, you may want to turn off the watcher via JsonServiceRegistryProperties#isWatcherEnabled().

    If the default location offered by CAS, JsonServiceRegistryProperties#DEFAULT_LOCATION_DIRECTORY, is used, CAS would attempt to locate JSON service files by forming the following pattern for each active spring application profile: 
    classpath*:/JsonServiceRegistryProperties#DEFAULT_LOCATION_DIRECTORY/profile-id/*.json

    You may also control whether default services should be included and initialized via #isInitDefaultServices().

    org.apereo.cas.configuration.model.core.services.ServiceRegistryCoreProperties.

    How can I configure this property?

    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.

    Actuator Endpoints

    The following endpoints are provided by CAS:

     Delete registered service by id.

     Handle and produce a list of services from registry.

     Export registered services as a single JSON file.

     Export registered services as a zip file.

     Fetch service either by numeric id or service id pattern.

     Fetch services by their type.

     Import registered services as a JSON document or a zip file.

     Save registered service supplied in the request body.

     Update registered service supplied in the request body.

     Verify if service access can be granted to the user.


    Registered Services

    Registered services present the following metadata:

    Field Description
    id Required unique identifier. This MUST be a valid numeric value.
    name Required name (255 characters or less).
    description Optional free-text description of the service. (255 characters or less)
    informationUrl Optional free-text link to the service information guide.
    privacyUrl Optional free-text link to the service privacy policy.
    redirectUrl Optional URL to use when returning an authentication response back to applications.
    logo Optional path to an image file that is the logo for this service. The image will be displayed on the login page along with the service description and name. The value may be a relative path to the images directory of the CAS web application or it may be a full URL.
    serviceId Required regular expression describing a logical service. A logical service defines one or more URLs where a service or services are located. The definition of the url pattern must be done carefully because it can open security breaches.
    locale Optional locale name that may be used to customize the CAS UI when the service requests a ticket. Values can use the Spring Expression Language syntax. See this guide for more details.
    theme Optional theme name that may be used to customize the CAS UI when the service requests a ticket. Values can use the Spring Expression Language syntax. See this guide for more details.
    proxyPolicy Determines whether the service is able to proxy authentication. See this guide for more info.
    evaluationOrder Determines relative order of evaluation of registered services. This flag is particularly important in cases where two service URL expressions cover the same services; evaluation order determines which registration is evaluated first and acts as an internal sorting factor.
    authenticationPolicy The authentication policy to act as a complement or override for the global authentication engine. See this guide for more details.
    attributeReleasePolicy The policy that describes the set of attributes allows to be released to the application, as well as any other filtering logic needed to weed some out. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    logoutType Defines how this service should be treated once the logout protocol is initiated. Acceptable values are LogoutType.BACK_CHANNEL, LogoutType.FRONT_CHANNEL or LogoutType.NONE. See this guide for more details on logout.
    responseType Defines how CAS should respond to requests for this service. See this guide for more details.
    usernameAttributeProvider The provider configuration which dictates what value as the “username” should be sent back to the application. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    accessStrategy The strategy configuration that outlines and access rules for this service. It describes whether the service is allowed, authorized to participate in SSO, or can be granted access from the CAS perspective based on a particular attribute-defined role, aka RBAC. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    publicKey The public key associated with this service that is used to authorize the request by encrypting certain elements and attributes in the CAS validation protocol response, such as the PGT or the credential. See this guide for more details on attribute release and filters.
    logoutUrl URL endpoint for this service to receive logout requests. See this guide for more details
    properties Extra metadata associated with this service in form of key/value pairs. This is used to inject custom fields into the service definition, to be used later by extension modules to define additional behavior on a per-service basis. See this guide for more info please.
    multifactorPolicy The policy that describes the configuration required for this service authentication, typically for multifactor authentication.
    contacts Specify the collection of contacts associated with service that own the application. See this guide for more info.
    matchingStrategy Specify the strategy used to match the service definition against an authentication request. See this guide for more info.
    supportedProtocols Specify supported and allowed protocols for this service. See this guide for more info.
    templateName Name of the template service definition to use as a blueprint, when constructing this service definition.
    :information_source: Service Types

    Note that while the above properties apply to all generic service definitions, there are additional service types in CAS that may be activated and required depending on the protocol used and the nature of the client application. Always check the dedicated guide for the capability you have in mind (i.e. OAuth, SAML, etc).

    Storage

    The following options may be used to store services in CAS.

    Storage Description Usage
    Memory See this guide. Store service definitions XML stored in memory. Changes require CAS repackaging and server restarts
    JSON See this guide. Store service definitions in flat JSON files. HA deployments require replication of service definitions.
    YAML See this guide. Same as JSON.
    GIT See this guide. Store service definitions in Git repository. Candidate for HA deployments.
    MongoDb See this guide. Store service definitions in MongoDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Redis See this guide. Store service definitions in Redis. Candidate for HA deployments.
    LDAP See this guide. Store service definitions in a directory server. Candidate for HA deployments.
    JPA See this guide. Store service definitions in a relational database (Oracle, MySQL, etc). Candidate for HA deployments.
    DynamoDb See this guide. Store service definitions in DynamoDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Amazon S3 See this guide. Store service definitions in Amazon S3 buckets. Candidate for HA deployments.
    CosmosDb See this guide. Store service definitions in an Azure CosmosDb. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Cassandra See this guide. Store service definitions in an Apache Cassandra. Candidate for HA deployments.
    REST See this guide. Design your own service registry implementation as a REST API. Candidate for HA deployments.
    Custom See this guide. Design your own service registry using CAS APIs as an extension. Candidate for HA deployments.

    How Do I Choose?

    There are is a wide range of service registries on the menu. The selection criteria is outlined below:

    • Choose a technology that you are most familiar with and have the skills and patience to troubleshoot, tune and scale for the win.
    • Choose a technology that does not force your CAS configuration to be tied to any individual servers/nodes in the cluster, as this will present auto-scaling issues and manual effort.
    • Choose a technology that works well with your network and firewall configuration and is performant and reliable enough based on your network topology.
    • Choose a technology that shows promising results under your expected load, having run performance and stress tests.
    • Choose a technology that does not depend on outside processes, systems and manual work as much as possible, is self-reliant and self contained.