Authentication and authorization
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.htdigest Auth Provider

We provide an implementation of AuthenticationProvider which uses the .digest file format to perform authentication. The provider will not watch for updates to the file after loading. If you need dynamic user management it would be more convenient to use dynamic providers such as jdbc or mongo providers.

To use this project, add the following dependency to the dependencies section of your build descriptor:

  • Maven (in your pom.xml):

<dependency>
 <groupId>io.vertx</groupId>
 <artifactId>vertx-auth-htdigest</artifactId>
 <version>4.4.9</version>
</dependency>
  • Gradle (in your build.gradle file):

compile 'io.vertx:vertx-auth-htdigest:4.4.9'

To create an instance you first need an .htdigest file. This file is created using the apache htdigest tool.

Once you’ve got one of these you can create a HtdigestAuth instance as follows:

HtdigestAuth authProvider = HtdigestAuth.create(vertx, ".htdigest");

Once you’ve got your instance you can authenticate with it just like any AuthenticationProvider.

The out of the box config assumes the usage of the file .htdigest in the root of the project.

Authentication

When authenticating using this implementation, it assumes that the digest authorization header is parsed as a JSON object which we refer from now on as authentication info:

JsonObject authInfo = new JsonObject()
  .put("username", "Mufasa")
  .put("realm", "[email protected]")
  .put("nonce", "dcd98b7102dd2f0e8b11d0f600bfb0c093")
  .put("method", "GET")
  .put("uri", "/dir/index.html")
  .put("response", "6629fae49393a05397450978507c4ef1");

authProvider.authenticate(authInfo)
  .onSuccess(user -> System.out.println("User: " + user.principal()))
  .onFailure(err -> {
    // Failed!
  });

Provider internal behavior

The provider will load the specified .htdigest file at start time and will not watch for modifications. If you require dynamic reloads, you will need to restart the provider.

The implementation does not have any other state than the digest file itself, this means that validation and generation of nonce strings and counters must be handled outside this provider.

Finally auth-int qop is not supported to avoid having to consume potential large blobs of data in order to validate the hash of the full request. This is usually also not present on modern web browsers.

When validating a user for a particular permission it will always return false since the htdigest file is a pure authentication mechanism and not authorization.