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On this page
  • Prerequisite
  • Create a simple application server
  • Make the application server a service in docker-compose.yaml
  • Add Nginx
  • Verify the request is authenticated
  • Optional: setting up resolver response caching

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  1. Deploy on your Cloud

Authenticating HTTP request with Nginx

How to authenticate HTTP request with Nginx

PreviousDeploy with Helm chartNextConfigurations

Last updated 8 months ago

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Authgear has an internal endpoint that can authenticate HTTP request.

Prerequisite

You must follow to get Authgear running first!

Create a simple application server

Below is a very simple application server written in Python that echoes most of the request headers.

from wsgiref.simple_server import make_server


def header_name(key):
    parts = key.split("_")[1:]
    parts = [part.lower() for part in parts]
    return "-".join(parts)


def app(environ, start_response):
    status = '200 OK'
    headers = [('Content-type', 'text/plain; charset=utf-8')]
    start_response(status, headers)

    for key, value in environ.items():
        if key.startswith("HTTP_"):
            name = header_name(key)
            yield ("%s: %s\n" % (name, value)).encode()


with make_server('', 8000, app) as httpd:
    print("listening on port 8000...")
    httpd.serve_forever()

Run it with:

python3 app.py

Make the application server a service in docker-compose.yaml

We have to write a Dockerfile for our application server.

FROM python:3.7-slim
COPY app.py .
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["python3", "app.py"]

We then declare it as a new service in docker-compose.yaml:

services:
  # Other services are omitted for brevity
  app:
    build:
      context: .
    ports:
    - "8000:8000"

Finally, run it!

docker-compose up

Add Nginx

Copy the following nginx.conf and save it as nginx.conf.

user  nginx;
worker_processes  1;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    keepalive_timeout  65;

    server {
        server_name _;
        listen 80;

        location / {
            # See Note
            proxy_pass http://authgear:3000;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
        }

        location /app {
            # See Note
            proxy_pass http://app:8000;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            auth_request /_auth;

            auth_request_set $x_authgear_session_valid $upstream_http_x_authgear_session_valid;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_user_id $upstream_http_x_authgear_user_id;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_user_anonymous $upstream_http_x_authgear_user_anonymous;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_user_verified $upstream_http_x_authgear_user_verified;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_session_acr $upstream_http_x_authgear_session_acr;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_session_amr $upstream_http_x_authgear_session_amr;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_session_authenticated_at $upstream_http_x_authgear_session_authenticated_at;
            auth_request_set $x_authgear_user_can_reauthenticate $upstream_http_x_authgear_user_can_reauthenticate;

            proxy_set_header x-authgear-session-valid $x_authgear_session_valid;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-user-id $x_authgear_user_id;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-user-anonymous $x_authgear_user_anonymous;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-user-verified $x_authgear_user_verified;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-session-acr $x_authgear_session_acr;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-session-amr $x_authgear_session_amr;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-session-authenticated-at $x_authgear_session_authenticated_at;
            proxy_set_header x-authgear-user-can-reauthenticate $x_authgear_user_can_reauthenticate;
        }

        location = /_auth {
            internal;
            # See Note
            proxy_pass http://authgear:3001/_resolver/resolve;
            proxy_pass_request_body off;
            proxy_set_header Content-Length "";
        }
    }
}

Add Nginx in docker-compose.yaml:

services:
  # Other services are omitted for brevity
  nginx:
    image: nginx:1.18
    volumes:
    - ./nginx.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf
    ports:
    - "8080:80"

Verify the request is authenticated

You should see the following:

x-authgear-session-valid: true
x-authgear-user-id: acdc0d99-f784-43d5-b53d-70f3506dfbf7
x-authgear-user-anonymous: false

Optional: setting up resolver response caching

Sometimes you may want to cache resolver response in nginx, for example, when the reverse proxy and Authgear is in different regions.

You may modify the nginx configuration as following to enable caching:

http {
    # ...
    proxy_cache_path /tmp/cache keys_zone=auth_cache:10m;

    server {
        # ...
        location = /_auth {
            # ...
            proxy_cache auth_cache;
            proxy_cache_key "$cookie_session|$http_authorization";
            proxy_cache_valid 200 10m;  # Adjust cache duration as desired.
        }
    }
}

Visit to verify it is working.

Visit to verify our application server is working with docker-compose.

Note: When plain domain is used in proxy_pass directive, the domain is resolved once and then cached indefinite. If the domain is public, then you use use variable in proxy_pass with resolver directive to respect DNS TTL. See For instructions on how to setup Nginx for production deployment, see .

Visit to reach Authgear and the application server.

Visit and login, then visit .

this
http://localhost:8000
http://localhost:8000
http://localhost:8080
http://localhost:8080
http://localhost:8080/app
https://www.nginx.com/blog/dns-service-discovery-nginx-plus/
Using Nginx as the reverse proxy