Client authentication using OAuth 2.0 access tokens

Pulsar supports authenticating clients using OAuth 2.0 access tokens. You can use OAuth 2.0 access tokens to identify a Pulsar client and associate the Pulsar client with some "principal" (or "role"), which is permitted to do some actions, such as publishing messages to a topic or consume messages from a topic.

This module is used to support the Pulsar client authentication plugin for OAuth 2.0. After communicating with the OAuth 2.0 server, the Pulsar client gets an access token from the OAuth 2.0 server, and passes this access token to the Pulsar broker to do the authentication. The broker can use the org.apache.pulsar.broker.authentication.AuthenticationProviderToken. Or, you can add your own AuthenticationProvider to make it with this module.

Authentication provider configuration

This library allows you to authenticate the Pulsar client by using an access token that is obtained from an OAuth 2.0 authorization service, which acts as a token issuer.

Authentication types

The authentication type determines how to obtain an access token through an OAuth 2.0 authorization flow.

note

Currently, the Pulsar Java client only supports the client_credentials authentication type.

Client credentials

The following table lists parameters supported for the client credentials authentication type.

Parameter	Description	Example	Required or not
type	OAuth 2.0 authentication type.	client_credentials (default)	Optional
issuerUrl	URL of the authentication provider which allows the Pulsar client to obtain an access token	https://accounts.google.com	Required
privateKey	URL to a JSON credentials file	Support the following pattern formats: file:///path/to/file file:/path/to/file data:application/json;base64,<base64-encoded value>	Required
audience	An OAuth 2.0 "resource server" identifier for the Pulsar cluster	https://broker.example.com	Optional
scope	Scope of an access request. For more information, see access token scope.	api://pulsar-cluster-1/.default	Optional

The credentials file contains service account credentials used with the client authentication type. The following shows an example of a credentials file credentials_file.json.

{
  "type": "client_credentials",
  "client_id": "d9ZyX97q1ef8Cr81WHVC4hFQ64vSlDK3",
  "client_secret": "on1uJ...k6F6R",
  "client_email": "1234567890-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz@developer.gserviceaccount.com",
  "issuer_url": "https://accounts.google.com"
}

In the above example, the authentication type is set to client_credentials by default. And the fields "client_id" and "client_secret" are required.

Typical original OAuth2 request mapping

The following shows a typical original OAuth2 request, which is used to obtain the access token from the OAuth2 server.

curl --request POST \
  --url https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/oauth/token \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{
  "client_id":"Xd23RHsUnvUlP7wchjNYOaIfazgeHd9x",
  "client_secret":"rT7ps7WY8uhdVuBTKWZkttwLdQotmdEliaM5rLfmgNibvqziZ-g07ZH52N_poGAb",
  "audience":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/",
  "grant_type":"client_credentials"}'

In the above example, the mapping relationship is shown as below.

• The issuerUrl parameter in this plugin is mapped to --url https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com.
• The privateKey file parameter in this plugin should at least contains the client_id and client_secret fields.
• The audience parameter in this plugin is mapped to "audience":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/". This field is only used by some identity providers.

Client Configuration

You can use the OAuth2 authentication provider with the following Pulsar clients.

Java client

You can use the factory method to configure authentication for Pulsar Java client.

import org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.auth.oauth2.AuthenticationFactoryOAuth2;

URL issuerUrl = new URL("https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com");
URL credentialsUrl = new URL("file:///path/to/KeyFile.json");
String audience = "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/";

PulsarClient client = PulsarClient.builder()
    .serviceUrl("pulsar://broker.example.com:6650/")
    .authentication(
        AuthenticationFactoryOAuth2.clientCredentials(issuerUrl, credentialsUrl, audience))
    .build();

In addition, you can also use the encoded parameters to configure authentication for Pulsar Java client.

Authentication auth = AuthenticationFactory
    .create(AuthenticationOAuth2.class.getName(), "{"type":"client_credentials","privateKey":"./key/path/..","issuerUrl":"...","audience":"..."}");
PulsarClient client = PulsarClient.builder()
    .serviceUrl("pulsar://broker.example.com:6650/")
    .authentication(auth)
    .build();

C++ client

The C++ client is similar to the Java client. You need to provide the parameters of issuerUrl, private_key (the credentials file path), and audience.

#include <pulsar/Client.h>

pulsar::ClientConfiguration config;
std::string params = R"({
    "issuer_url": "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
    "private_key": "../../pulsar-broker/src/test/resources/authentication/token/cpp_credentials_file.json",
    "audience": "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/"})";

config.setAuth(pulsar::AuthOauth2::create(params));

pulsar::Client client("pulsar://broker.example.com:6650/", config);

Go client

To enable OAuth2 authentication in Go client, you need to configure OAuth2 authentication. This example shows how to configure OAuth2 authentication in Go client.

oauth := pulsar.NewAuthenticationOAuth2(map[string]string{
		"type":       "client_credentials",
		"issuerUrl":  "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
		"audience":   "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/",
		"privateKey": "/path/to/privateKey",
		"clientId":   "0Xx...Yyxeny",
	})
client, err := pulsar.NewClient(pulsar.ClientOptions{
		URL:              "pulsar://my-cluster:6650",
		Authentication:   oauth,
})

Python client

To enable OAuth2 authentication in Python client, you need to configure OAuth2 authentication. This example shows how to configure OAuth2 authentication in Python client.

from pulsar import Client, AuthenticationOauth2

params = '''
{
    "issuer_url": "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
    "private_key": "/path/to/privateKey",
    "audience": "https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/"
}
'''

client = Client("pulsar://my-cluster:6650", authentication=AuthenticationOauth2(params))

Node.js client

To enable OAuth2 authentication in Node.js client, you need to configure OAuth2 authentication. This example shows how to configure OAuth2 authentication in Node.js client.

    const Pulsar = require('pulsar-client');
    const issuer_url = process.env.ISSUER_URL;
    const private_key = process.env.PRIVATE_KEY;
    const audience = process.env.AUDIENCE;
    const scope = process.env.SCOPE;
    const service_url = process.env.SERVICE_URL;
    const client_id = process.env.CLIENT_ID;
    const client_secret = process.env.CLIENT_SECRET;
    (async () => {
      const params = {
        issuer_url: issuer_url
      }
      if (private_key.length > 0) {
        params['private_key'] = private_key
      } else {
        params['client_id'] = client_id
        params['client_secret'] = client_secret
      }
      if (audience.length > 0) {
        params['audience'] = audience
      }
      if (scope.length > 0) {
        params['scope'] = scope
      }
      const auth = new Pulsar.AuthenticationOauth2(params);
      // Create a client
      const client = new Pulsar.Client({
        serviceUrl: service_url,
        tlsAllowInsecureConnection: true,
        authentication: auth,
      });
      await client.close();
    })();

note

The support for OAuth2 authentication is only available in Node.js client 1.6.2 and later versions.

CLI configuration

This section describes how to use Pulsar CLI tools to connect a cluster through OAuth2 authentication plugin.

pulsar-admin

This example shows how to use pulsar-admin to connect to a cluster through OAuth2 authentication plugin.

bin/pulsar-admin --admin-url https://streamnative.cloud:443 \
--auth-plugin org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.auth.oauth2.AuthenticationOAuth2 \
--auth-params '{"privateKey":"file:///path/to/key/file.json",
    "issuerUrl":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
    "audience":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/"}' \
tenants list

Set the admin-url parameter to the Web service URL. A Web service URL is a combination of the protocol, hostname and port ID, such as pulsar://localhost:6650. Set the privateKey, issuerUrl, and audience parameters to the values based on the configuration in the key file. For details, see authentication types.

pulsar-client

This example shows how to use pulsar-client to connect to a cluster through OAuth2 authentication plugin.

bin/pulsar-client \
--url SERVICE_URL \
--auth-plugin org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.auth.oauth2.AuthenticationOAuth2 \
--auth-params '{"privateKey":"file:///path/to/key/file.json",
    "issuerUrl":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
    "audience":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/"}' \
produce test-topic -m "test-message" -n 10

Set the admin-url parameter to the Web service URL. A Web service URL is a combination of the protocol, hostname and port ID, such as pulsar://localhost:6650. Set the privateKey, issuerUrl, and audience parameters to the values based on the configuration in the key file. For details, see authentication types.

pulsar-perf

This example shows how to use pulsar-perf to connect to a cluster through OAuth2 authentication plugin.

bin/pulsar-perf produce --service-url pulsar+ssl://streamnative.cloud:6651 \
--auth-plugin org.apache.pulsar.client.impl.auth.oauth2.AuthenticationOAuth2 \
--auth-params '{"privateKey":"file:///path/to/key/file.json",
    "issuerUrl":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com",
    "audience":"https://dev-kt-aa9ne.us.auth0.com/api/v2/"}' \
-r 1000 -s 1024 test-topic

Set the admin-url parameter to the Web service URL. A Web service URL is a combination of the protocol, hostname and port ID, such as pulsar://localhost:6650. Set the privateKey, issuerUrl, and audience parameters to the values based on the configuration in the key file. For details, see authentication types.