Self-Hosting SSOReady

How to manage SAML entirely in your cloud or your customer's cloud

SSOReady is a free, MIT-licensed way to add SAML support to your app. A free hosted version of SSOReady is available online at app.ssoready.com. This article explains how to run SSOReady on your own machines, instead of using the public, free version of SSOReady at app.ssoready.com.

This article focuses on running SSOReady in your own cloud. You can also run SSOReady in your customer’s cloud, so that SSOReady becomes a component of your larger on-premises offering to your customers; the only difference is that you’ll need to follow these instructions for each customer.

SSOReady Components

Diagram of components involved in an SSOReady deployment

SSOReady requires four essential components:

  • ssoready-app is the webapp for SSOReady. In the free hosted version, this lives at https://app.ssoready.com.
  • ssoready-api is what ssoready-app and your code (either directly, or using the SSOReady SDKs) talks to. In the free hosted version, this lives at https://api.ssoready.com.
  • ssoready-auth is proxy for SAML interactions. In the free hosted version, this lives at https://auth.ssoready.com.
  • ssoready-db is a PostgreSQL database that ssoready-api and ssoready-auth talk to. This is where SSOReady keeps state.

To that end, SSOReady maintains four Docker containers you can use to self-host:

  • ssoready/ssoready-app runs the webapp
  • ssoready/ssoready-api runs the SSOReady API
  • ssoready/ssoready-auth runs the public-facing SSOReady SAML proxy
  • ssoready/ssoready-migrate runs SSOReady’s database migrations against a Postgres database

Example docker-compose setup

Here’s an example of how you can self-host SSOReady using docker compose. You can copy-paste this into docker-compose.yml and run docker compose up to test it yourself right now.

docker-compose.yml
1version: "2.4"
2services:
3  # this is an example postgres-in-docker setup, but any postgres (even outside of docker) will work
4  postgres:
5    image: postgres:15.3
6    environment:
7      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "password"
8    ports:
9      - "5432:5432"
10
11  ssoready-auth:
12    image: ssoready/ssoready-auth:sha-2f1ce3d
13    environment:
14      AUTH_SERVE_ADDR: ":80"
15
16      # Have this point at ssoready-db. In this example, that's the `postgres` docker-compose service above.
17      AUTH_DB: "postgres://postgres:password@postgres/postgres"
18
19      # Have this point at where this service will be accessible from the public internet.
20      AUTH_BASE_URL: "http://localhost:8080"
21
22      # See "SAML State Signing Key" below. For initial testing, this default value is fine.
23      AUTH_SAML_STATE_SIGNING_KEY: "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
24    ports:
25      - "8080:80"
26
27  ssoready-api:
28    image: ssoready/ssoready-api:sha-2f1ce3d
29    environment:
30      API_SERVE_ADDR: ":80"
31
32      # Have this point at ssoready-db. In this example, that's the `postgres` docker-compose service above.
33      API_DB: "postgres://postgres:password@postgres/postgres"
34
35      # Have this point at where the ssoready-auth service will be accessible from the public internet.
36      API_DEFAULT_AUTH_URL: "http://localhost:8080"
37
38      # See "Supporting Login Methods" below.
39      API_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID: "171906208332-m8dg2p6av2f0aa7lliaj6oo0grct57p1.apps.googleusercontent.com"
40
41      # See "SAML State Signing Key" below. For initial testing, this default value is fine.
42      API_SAML_STATE_SIGNING_KEY: "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
43    ports:
44      - "8081:80"
45
46  ssoready-app:
47    image: ssoready/ssoready-app:sha-2f1ce3d
48    environment:
49      APP_SERVE_PORT: "80"
50
51      # Have this point at where the ssoready-app service will be accessible from the public internet.
52      APP_APP_URL: "http://localhost:8082"
53
54      # Have this point at where the ssoready-api service will be accessible from the public internet,
55      APP_PUBLIC_API_URL: "http://localhost:8081"
56
57      # Have this point at APP_PUBLIC_API_URL, followed by "/internal/connect".
58      APP_API_URL: "http://localhost:8081/internal/connect"
59
60      # See "Supporting Login Methods" below.
61      APP_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID: "171906208332-m8dg2p6av2f0aa7lliaj6oo0grct57p1.apps.googleusercontent.com"
62    ports:
63      - "8082:80"

(The example above requires localhost ports 5432, 8080, 8081, and 8082.)

Now, you’ll need to set up the database tables that SSOReady requires. Do so by running:

$docker run --network=host ssoready/ssoready-migrate:sha-2f1ce3d -d 'postgres://postgres:password@localhost/postgres?sslmode=disable' up

From here, you can visit localhost:8082, log in via Google, and then start using SSOReady as usual. To use the SSOReady SDKs with your locally-running instance of SSOReady, see “Configuring SDKs to talk to self-hosted SSOReady instances” below.

Putting it in production

The example setup above is meant for use in localhost. There are a few things you need to do to make it work in production:

  1. Configure a “SAML State Signing Key”
  2. (Only required if you use SAML-over-OAuth) Configure an id_token signing key
  3. Configure ways to log into ssoready-app

The sections below detail how you’ll do this.

SAML State Signing Key

In the example configuration above, ssoready-auth and ssoready-api both have a “SAML State Signing Key” set to all zeroes. That’s a value that’s adequate for development, but in production you must use a random value. Generate this random value by running:

$openssl rand -hex 32

ssoready-auth and ssoready-api must use the same value for this secret. It is safe to rotate this value at any time by using a new random, 64-digit hex number.

id_token Signing Key

This section is only required if you use SAML-over-OAuth.

SSOReady’s SAML-over-OAuth integration has ssoready-auth act as an OIDC-compliant server. Such servers need to issue id_token values, which are RSA-signed JSON Web Tokens. ssoready-auth by default generates a new, random RSA keypair to sign these id_token values. This default doesn’t work well if you’re running multiple ssoready-auth instances behind a load balancer, or if ssoready-auth instances are frequently being recreated.

To configure an id_token signing key, generate a new base64-encoded RSA private key like so:

$openssl genrsa 2048 | base64

And then update ssoready-auth’s AUTH_OAUTH_ID_TOKEN_PRIVATE_KEY to be that value.

Supporting Login Methods

To log into ssoready-app, you need to configure at least one of the following login methods:

  • Log in with Google
  • Email (aka “magic links”)
  • Log in with Microsoft

If you don’t configure any of these, then there’s no way to log into SSOReady. The simplest login method to add is Google, followed by email, followed by Microsoft.

Configuring log in with Google

To configure Google-based social logins into ssoready-app, you need to populate the following env vars:

  • APP_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID in ssoready-app
  • API_GOOGLE_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID in ssoready-api

To do so, you need to create a Google OAuth client. Follow Google’s docs for creating an OAuth client. You’ll want to configure the same “Authorized Javascript origin” as the value you chose for APP_APP_URL. From there, the client ID (ending in apps.googleusercontent.com) is the value you’ll want to put in the two env vars.

Configuring email-based logins

Configuring log in with email is optional. Most users only set up Google.

To configure email-based logins into ssoready-app, you need to populate the following env vars:

  • API_RESEND_API_KEY in ssoready-api
  • API_EMAIL_CHALLENGE_FROM in ssoready-api
  • API_EMAIL_VERIFICATION_ENDPOINT in ssoready-api

SSOReady uses Resend to send transactional emails. Resend’s free tier is more than enough here; you will not need to pay for Resend. To get an API key, you will:

  1. Sign up for Resend for free
  2. Configure a domain to send emails from
  3. Create an API key. Make sure the API key has sending privileges for your domain.

From there, configure:

  • API_RESEND_API_KEY to be your Resend API key. It starts with re_....
  • API_EMAIL_CHALLENGE_FROM to be noreply@DOMAIN, where DOMAIN is the domain you configured in step (2) above.
  • API_EMAIL_VERIFICATION_ENDPOINT to be the same value you chose for APP_APP_URL in ssoready-app, but followed by /verify-email.

Configuring log in with Microsoft

Configuring log in with Microsoft is optional. Most users only set up Google.

To configure Microsoft-based logins into ssoready-app, you need to populate the following env vars:

  • API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID in ssoready-api
  • API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET in ssoready-api
  • API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI in ssoready-api
  • APP_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID in ssoready-app
  • APP_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI in ssoready-app

Set API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI and APP_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_REDIRECT_URI to be the same value as APP_APP_URL in ssoready-app, but followed by /internal/microsoft-callback.

To get the CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET vars, you need to create a Microsoft OAuth client. Follow Microsoft’s docs for creating an OAuth app.

  • Choose “Accounts in any organizational directory and personal Microsoft accounts” for supported account types.
  • Choose the “Web” platform type, and the redirect URL will be the same as the REDIRECT_URI env vars above.
  • The app’s “Application (Client) ID”, a UUID, is what you use for API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and APP_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID.
  • Create a “client secret” credential (Microsoft documents this here under the “Add a client secret” tab). The secret’s value is what you put in API_MICROSOFT_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET.

Configuring SDKs to talk to self-hosted SSOReady instances

By default, the SSOReady SDKs expect to talk to https://api.ssoready.com. When you’re running SSOReady self-hosted, you need to point it to your own instance of ssoready-api. Here’s how you do that, supposing your ssoready-api lives at localhost:8081 like in the example above:

1import { SSOReadyClient } from "ssoready";
2
3const ssoready = new SSOReadyClient({
4    // add this new `environment` parameter
5    environment: "http://localhost:8081",
6    apiKey: "ssoready_sk_...",
7});

Running migrations on ssoready-db

SSOReady requires ssoready-db to be a Postgres database. The ssoready/ssoready-migrate docker image can take any Postgres database, and set it up to have the database tables SSOReady requires. ssoready-migrate is idempotent; it is safe to run it multiple times or at any time.

$docker run --network=host ssoready/ssoready-migrate:main -d 'postgres://...' up

The -d (--database-url) parameter requires a postgres:// URI, of the form:

postgres://username:password@host:port/db_name