forward-auth

Description

The forward-auth Plugin implements a classic external authentication model. When authentication fails, you can have a custom error message or redirect the user to an authentication page.

This Plugin moves the authentication and authorization logic to a dedicated external service. APISIX forwards the user's requests to the external service, blocks the original request, and replaces the result when the external service responds with a non 2xx status code.

Attributes

Name	Type	Required	Default	Valid values	Description
uri	string	True			URI of the authorization service.
ssl_verify	boolean	False	true		When set to true, verifies the SSL certificate.
request_method	string	False	GET	["GET","POST"]	HTTP method for a client to send requests to the authorization service. When set to POST the request body is send to the authorization service.
request_headers	array[string]	False			Client request headers to be sent to the authorization service. If not set, only the headers provided by APISIX are sent (for example, X-Forwarded-XXX).
upstream_headers	array[string]	False			Authorization service response headers to be forwarded to the Upstream. If not set, no headers are forwarded to the Upstream service.
client_headers	array[string]	False			Authorization service response headers to be sent to the client when authorization fails. If not set, no headers will be sent to the client.
timeout	integer	False	3000ms	[1, 60000]ms	Timeout for the authorization service HTTP call.
keepalive	boolean	False	true		When set to true, keeps the connection alive for multiple requests.
keepalive_timeout	integer	False	60000ms	[1000, ...]ms	Idle time after which the connection is closed.
keepalive_pool	integer	False	5	[1, ...]ms	Connection pool limit.
allow_degradation	boolean	False	false		When set to true, allows authentication to be skipped when authentication server is unavailable.
status_on_error	integer	False	403	[200,...,599]	Sets the HTTP status that is returned to the client when there is a network error to the authorization service. The default status is “403” (HTTP Forbidden).

Data definition

APISIX will generate and send the request headers listed below to the authorization service:

Scheme	HTTP Method	Host	URI	Source IP
X-Forwarded-Proto	X-Forwarded-Method	X-Forwarded-Host	X-Forwarded-Uri	X-Forwarded-For

Example usage

First, you need to setup your external authorization service. The example below uses Apache APISIX's serverless Plugin to mock the service:

note

You can fetch the admin_key from config.yaml and save to an environment variable with the following command:

admin_key=$(yq '.deployment.admin.admin_key[0].key' conf/config.yaml | sed 's/"//g')

curl -X PUT 'http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/auth' \
    -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" \
    -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
    -d '{
    "uri": "/auth",
    "plugins": {
        "serverless-pre-function": {
            "phase": "rewrite",
            "functions": [
                "return function (conf, ctx)
                    local core = require(\"apisix.core\");
                    local authorization = core.request.header(ctx, \"Authorization\");
                    if authorization == \"123\" then
                        core.response.exit(200);
                    elseif authorization == \"321\" then
                        core.response.set_header(\"X-User-ID\", \"i-am-user\");
                        core.response.exit(200);
                    else core.response.set_header(\"Location\", \"http://example.com/auth\");
                        core.response.exit(403);
                    end
                end"
            ]
        }
    }
}'

Now you can configure the forward-auth Plugin to a specific Route:

curl -X PUT 'http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1' \
    -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" \
    -d '{
    "uri": "/headers",
    "plugins": {
        "forward-auth": {
            "uri": "http://127.0.0.1:9080/auth",
            "request_headers": ["Authorization"],
            "upstream_headers": ["X-User-ID"],
            "client_headers": ["Location"]
        }
    },
    "upstream": {
        "nodes": {
            "httpbin.org:80": 1
        },
        "type": "roundrobin"
    }
}'

Now if we send the authorization details in the request header:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/headers -H 'Authorization: 123'

{
    "headers": {
        "Authorization": "123",
        "Next": "More-headers"
    }
}

The authorization service response can also be forwarded to the Upstream:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9080/headers -H 'Authorization: 321'

{
    "headers": {
        "Authorization": "321",
        "X-User-ID": "i-am-user",
        "Next": "More-headers"
    }
}

When authorization fails, the authorization service can send custom response back to the user:

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:9080/headers

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Location: http://example.com/auth

Delete Plugin

To remove the forward-auth Plugin, you can delete the corresponding JSON configuration from the Plugin configuration. APISIX will automatically reload and you do not have to restart for this to take effect.

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 -H "X-API-KEY: $admin_key" -X PUT -d '
{
    "methods": ["GET"],
    "uri": "/hello",
    "plugins": {},
    "upstream": {
        "type": "roundrobin",
        "nodes": {
            "127.0.0.1:1980": 1
        }
    }
}'