Request Path Authentication

A request path authenticator is a special type of local authenticator meant to authenticate requests that contain the user’s credentials. This means that you can use the Single-Sign-On mechanism without having an identity provider login page to prompt the end user for credentials.

Once the initial request is handed over to the authentication framework from an inbound authenticator, the authentication framework communicates with the service provider configuration component to find the set of request path authenticators registered with the service provider corresponding to the current authentication request. Then, the framework will check whether there is any request path authenticator applicable for the initial authentication request. In other words, a request path authenticator will get executed only if the initial authentication request brings the applicable set of credentials with it.The request path authenticators always requires the user credentials to be present in the initial authentication request itself. This does not need any end-user interaction with the Identity Server. Once the request path authentication is successfully completed, the request path authenticator will notify the authentication framework. The framework will then decide no more authentication is needed and hand over the control to the corresponding response builder of the inbound authenticator.

The following types of request path authenticators can be used to achieve this.

• Basic Auth Request Path Authentication
• OAuth Request Path Authenticator

For more information on how request path authentication works, see Try Request Path Authentication.