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dvankempen
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert






This blog post series is about developing applications in a multi-cloud environment.

For the end-to-end hands-on tutorial example, see

For the step-by-step series, visit

  1. Cloud Foundry, UAA, and XSUAA

  2. Business Logic App

  3. Service Instance (SAP HANA Cloud)

  4. Application Router

  5. Authentication using XSUAA <<< this post

  6. Authorization using XSUAA

  7. Multi-target applications (MTA)

  8. Application Runtime (Appendix)


Questions? Post as comment.

Useful? Give us a like and share on social media.

Thanks!



Hands-On Tutorials


Developing Secure Applications on the SAP Cloud Platform


In this blog series, we explore authentication and authorisation using XSUAA in the SAP Cloud Platform, Cloud Foundry environment.

In this blog, we cover how we can authenticate access to our business logic app.

Tutorial Video


In this sixth video of the series, we explore authentication using XSUAA service with some code changes to the business logic of our services app.

https://youtu.be/60HCsvszt2M

Sample Code


As before, we continue with the (slightly modified) sample code from SAP Cloud Platform documentation:

You can download the sample code from repository

Appendix


For more detailed information about the SAP Cloud Platform trial environment, Cloud Foundry buildpacks, dependencies declarations, attributes, Diego cells and more, see the "appendix" blog


Business Logic App


Application Descriptor | Package.json


For authorisation, we are going to use passport, a generic Node.js module, together with the XS Advanced Container Security API for Node.js.

Passport is Express-compatible authentication middleware for Node.js (as documented) and we use xsenv to read the application configurations for bound services and certificates in the SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry environment, and xssec for the security configuration.

As documented

To make a connection to SAP HANA Cloud, we use the HDB (SAP HANA) convenience package with xsenv to lookup the bound hana service for credentials.

npm i passport
npm i @sap/xssec
npm i @sap/xsenv

This results in the following dependencies for our package.json file.
"dependencies": {
...
"@sap/xsenv": "^3.0.0",
"@sap/xssec": "^3.0.10",
"passport": "^0.4.1"
},

Business Logic | Server.js


To the business logic, we change the getServices call to both the hdicontainer-1 service and myxsuaa services created previously.

We initialise password with JWT authentication using xssec. This is boilerplate code from

The /xsuaa path returns the authenticated user id (platform) and the user from the hana environment.
const xsenv = require('@sap/xsenv');
var services = xsenv.getServices({ hana:'hdicontainer-1', uaa:'myxsuaa' });

const passport = require('passport');
var JWTStrategy = require('@sap/xssec').JWTStrategy;
passport.use(new JWTStrategy(services.uaa));
app.use(passport.initialize());
app.use(passport.authenticate('JWT', { session: false }));

// Get environment using passport, xsenv, and xssec
app.get('/xsuaa', function (req, res, next) {
res.send('Application user: ' + req.user.id + '<br>' + 'HANA user: ' + services.hana.user);
});


Application Router


We continue with the approuter as configured in the previous blog where we installed the @sap/approuter package and defined the route(s) in the xs-app.json file.

User Interface | Index.html


To the home page of the approuter add a line to point to /xsuaa.
<html>
<head>
<title>XSUAA Tutorial</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>XSUAA Tutorial</h1>
<a href="https://blogs.sap.com/myapp/"> get('/')</a></br>
<a href="https://blogs.sap.com/myapp/xsuaa">get('/xsuaa'</a></br>
<a href="https://blogs.sap.com/myapp/hana">get('/hana')</a>
</body>
</html>

App Router Description | xs-app.json


 

The router will forward any request to /myapp to the destination with name "myapp" (no changes).


This destination is defined in the manifest (no changes).



App Deployment


Command Line


To deploy the app run the cf push command. No changes were made to the manifest.
# housekeeping
cf d[elete] myapp -r -f
# deploying
cf push
# running
cf a[pps]



Unauthorized


When we now access the business logic app directly we get an HTTP 403 Unauthorized message.



App Router


When we access the app router, we are first prompted to provide the credentials to our identity provider, here SAP ID services.


We are then presented with the home page (index.html) of the Application Router.


Selecting the links makes a call the business logic app. Note that we remain connected to the Application Router.




Please Proceed


In the next blog we explain how we can configure our app for authorization.


Share and Connect


Questions? Please post as comment.

Useful? Give us a like and share on social media.

Thanks!

If you would like to receive updates, connect with me on

For the author page of SAP PRESS, visit








Over the years, for the SAP HANA Academy, SAP’s Partner Innovation Lab, and à titre personnel, I have written a little over 300 posts here for the SAP Community. Some articles only reached a few readers. Others attracted quite a few more.

For your reading pleasure and convenience, here is a curated list of posts which somehow managed to pass the 10k-view mile stone and, as sign of current interest, still tickle the counters each month.


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