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16.4. Use Single Sign On (SSO) In A Web Application

Overview

Single Sign On (SSO) capabilities are provided by the web and Infinispan subsystems. Use this procedure to configure SSO in web applications.

Prerequisites

  • You need to have a configured security domain which handles authentication and authorization.
  • The infinispan subsystem needs to be present. It is present in the full-ha profile for a managed domain, or by using the standalone-full-ha.xml configuration in a standalone server.
  • The web cache-container and SSO cache-container must each be present. The initial configuration files already contain the web cache-container, and some of the configurations already contain the SSO cache-container as well. Use the following commands to check for and enable the SSO cache container. Note that these commands modify the ha profile of a managed domain. You can change the commands to use a different profile, or remove the /profile=ha portion of the command, for a standalone server.

    Example 16.1. Check for the web cache-container

    The profiles and configurations mentioned above include the web cache-container by default. Use the following command to verify its presence. If you use a different profile, substitute its name instead of ha.
    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web/:read-resource(recursive=false,proxies=false,include-runtime=false,include-defaults=true)
    If the result is success the subsystem is present. Otherwise, you need to add it.

    Example 16.2. Add the web cache-container

    Use the following three commands to enable the web cache-container to your configuration. Modify the name of the profile as appropriate, as well as the other parameters. The parameters here are the ones used in a default configuration.
    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web:add(aliases=["standard-session-cache"],default-cache="repl",module="org.jboss.as.clustering.web.infinispan")
    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web/transport=TRANSPORT:add(lock-timeout=60000)
    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web/replicated-cache=repl:add(mode="ASYNC",batching=true)

    Example 16.3. Check for the SSO cache-container

    Run the following Management CLI command:
    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web/:read-resource(recursive=true,proxies=false,include-runtime=false,include-defaults=true)
    Look for output like the following: "sso" => {
    If you do not find it, the SSO cache-container is not present in your configuration.

    Example 16.4. Add the SSO cache-container

    /profile=ha/subsystem=infinispan/cache-container=web/replicated-cache=sso:add(mode="SYNC", batching=true)
  • The web subsystem needs to be configured to use SSO. The following command enables SSO on the virtual server called default-host, and the cookie domain domain.com. The cache name is sso, and reauthentication is disabled.
    /profile=ha/subsystem=web/virtual-server=default-host/sso=configuration:add(cache-container="web",cache-name="sso",reauthenticate="false",domain="domain.com")
  • Each application which will share the SSO information needs to be configured to use the same <security-domain> in its jboss-web.xml deployment descriptor and the same Realm in its web.xml configuration file.
Differences Between Clustered and Non-Clustered SSO Valves

The SSO Valves are configured automatically when sso is configured under the web subsystem in a server profile. The ClusteredSingleSignOn version is used when attribute cache-container is present, otherwise standard SingleSignOn class is used.

Example 16.5. Example Clustered SSO Configuration

/subsystem=web/virtual-server=default-host/sso=configuration:add(cache-container="web",cache-name="sso",reauthenticate="false",domain="domain.com")

Example 16.6. Example Non-Clustered SSO Configuration

/subsystem=web/virtual-server=default-host/sso=configuration:add(reauthenticate="false")
Invalidate a Session

An application can programmatically invalidate a session by invoking method javax.servlet.http.HttpSession.invalidate().