fauxauth

Helper application for testing OAuth clients

What is this?

fauxauth is a mock server for testing applications that are using OAuth authentication. Specifically, it was created to pretend to be GitHub's OAuth flow, as documented here.

How can I use it?

fauxauth is set up for two primary use cases:

• Docker: if you're developing or testing your app using Docker containers, you can make fauxauth part of a multi-container network using Compose.

  Assuming an app that will locate the OAuth provider via an OAUTH_URL environment variable, your docker-compose.yml could look something like:

  version: '3'
  services:
      some_app:
          ...
          links:
            - oauth
          environment:
              OAUTH_URL: http://oauth
      ...
      oauth:
          image: textbook/fauxauth

  You should generally specify a tag to use, rather than use the default :latest; the build process for release vX.Y.Z creates the tags :vX, :vX.Y and :vX.Y.Z and publishes them all to Docker Hub, so you can pick a level of stability you're comfortable with (e.g. :v2 is equivalent to NPM semver's ^2.0.0, whereas :v2.1 is equivalent to ~2.1.0).

• Node Dependency: alternatively, you may want to run fauxauth directly. You can install it from NPM as follows:

  npm install fauxauth --save-dev  # or "yarn add fauxauth -D"

  Once installed, you can add it to one of your package.json scripts. I find concurrently useful for simplifying development tasks like this, e.g.

  {
      ...
      "scripts": {
          ...
          "dev": "concurrently -n \"fauxauth,some_app\" \"npm run fauxauth\" \"npm start\""
      }
  }

Roll your own

(New in v4.2)

You can also import the app factory and create your own app:

import appFactory from "fauxauth";

const app = appFactory({ callbackUrl: "http://localhost:3001" });

app.listen(4200, () => {
	console.log("I'm listening...");
});

Core router

(New in v8.1)

Alternatively, you can get direct access to the core router, although you have to take more responsibility for setup:

import express from "express";
import { coreRouter } from "fauxauth";

const app = express();
const { middleware, routes, views } = coreRouter({/* any configuration */});

// Ensure the select page can render
app.set("view engine", views.engine);
app.set("views", views.directory);

// Register required middleware
app.use(middleware);

// Mount the routes wherever you like
app.use("/login/oauth", routes);

Note that only the /authorize and /access_token routes are exposed this way.

Compatibility

The compiled version of fauxauth, as released to NPM, is tested against the latest versions of the active Node LTS releases, currently Hydrogen (18) and Iron (20). Compilation is carried out using TypeScript in the Node version specified in .nvmrc.

Options

PORT

You can configure the port that the fauxauth server runs on by setting the PORT environment variable, e.g. using cross-env in your scripts:

{
    ...
    "scripts": {
        ...
        "fauxauth": "cross-env PORT=3210 fauxauth"
    }
}

DEBUG

(New in v4.2.2)

You can configure debug logging using the DEBUG environment variable. fauxauth uses the standard debug package, so you can enable all logs by setting DEBUG=fauxauth:* or enable more specific namespaces as needed.

Configuration

You can also set the OAuth configuration; it is initially hardcoded as follows:

Name	Description	Initial value
appendScopes	Add the scopes to the token (e.g. "token/scope1/scope2")	false
callbackUrl	The base URL to return or validate redirect_uri against	"http://example.org/"
clientId	The client ID to be accepted by the /authorize endpoint	"1ae9b0ca17e754106b51"
clientSecret	The client secret required by the /access_token endpoint	"3efb56fdbac1cb21f3d4fea9b70036e04a34d068"
codes	The codes accepted by /access_token and their tokens	{}
tokenMap	A map from choices (e.g. roles) to a token for that choice	undefined

You can update this configuration by sending a PATCH to the /_configuration endpoint, which accepts the changes as a JSON patch request. A GET to the same endpoint provides the current configuration. You can reset to the initial configuration using a DELETE request.

Alternatively, use the following methods to override all or part of the default configuration (in priority order, highest first):

(Options other than FAUXAUTH_CONFIG new in v5.0)

• CLI flags, e.g. fauxauth --client-id=my-client-id
• A fauxauth key in your package.json:

  {
    ...
    "fauxauth": {
      "callbackUrl": "http://localhost:4321"
    }
  }

• Individual environment variables, e.g. FAUXAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=supersecret fauxauth
• A JSON string as the FAUXAUTH_CONFIG environment variable

Token map

(New in v4.0)

If you set a token map, instead of immediately redirecting to the specified redirect URI, fauxauth will render a page where the user can select which token they want to use. For example, given the following FAUXAUTH_CONFIG:

{
  "tokenMap": {
    "Headteacher": "86d66c5b7532a0083612",
    "Teacher": "1d4fdc5bb3aefa5a01dd",
    "Student": "4d39f64b071e49aeedce"
  }
}

something like the following form will be rendered:

<form action="/authorize" method="post" id="root-form">
    <label for="role-select">
        Select identity:
        <select id="role-select" name="code">
            <option value="288e5e60aa9220000000">Headteacher</option>
            <option value="c4f9e4bfffa600000000">Teacher</option>
            <option value="76555f344527c0000000">Student</option>
        </select>
    </label>

    <!-- hidden inputs -->

    <!-- scope checkboxes (if relevant, see below) -->

    <button id="submit-button" type="submit">Authenticate</button>
</form>

When the form is submitted, the location will be changed to the specified redirect URI but with the code replaced with the choice value (e.g. http://example.org/?code=c4f9e4bfffa600000000). The correct request to the /access_token endpoint with that code will recover the specified token, 1d4fdc5bb3aefa5a01dd.

For example, this allows you to configure tokens representing different roles, so that a developer or automated test can choose the appropriate role to "log in" as.

Scopes

(New in v8.0)

From v8, fauxauth handles the scopes in the GET /authorize request. By default these will simply be retained through the process and included in the response to POST /access_token. For example if the initial request was:

GET .../authorize?client_id=...&scope=foo+bar

then the response to the POST /access_token request using the resulting code would include foo,bar as the value of the scope property.

If you use the tokenMap browser-based flow, the scopes will be rendered as a set of checkboxes (all checked by default). The user can remove any or all of these scopes; the response to POST /access_token will reflect this in the scope property.

If you set the appendScopes configuration option, the scopes are appended to the token returned in the response to POST /access_token. For example, if the scopes were read:user and user:email and the token (whether generated automatically or provided in a token map) was somerandomtoken, the token in the response would be somerandomtoken/read:user/user:email. This allows testing of workflows where the user doesn't accept all of the requested scopes.

How can I work on it?

Fork and clone the repository to your local machine and run npm install or npm cito install the relevant dependencies.

To run the full automated validation suite (lint, build and test), run npm run ship.