Creating your own OpenID Connect server with ASOS: testing your authorization server with Postman
This post is the eighth part of a series of blog posts entitled Creating your own OpenID Connect server with ASOS:
- Introduction
- Choosing the right flow(s)
- Registering the middleware in the ASP.NET Core pipeline
- Creating your own authorization provider
- Implementing the resource owner password credentials grant
- Implementing the authorization code and implicit flows
- Adding custom claims and granting scopes
- Testing your authorization server with Postman
- Conclusion
The sample used in this post can be found in the AspNet.Security.OpenIdConnect.Samples
repository, that also hosts the Cordova, MVC and SignalR samples for ASOS.
For clarity, it implements both the authorization code flow and the password flow, but doesn't use any membership stack (the user credentials are hardcoded in the authorization provider class and a fake identity is always used to create tokens).
To test REST services, one of the easiest options is indisputably to use Postman. If you're not already familiar with Postman, I encourage you to read the documentation.
Retrieving an access token using the resource owner password credentials grant
Using the password flow with Postman is quite straightforward:
- Select
POST
as the HTTP method. - Fill the
Request URL
input with the absolute address of the token endpoint. - Click on the
Body
tab and choose thex-www-form-urlencoded
encoding. - Add the OAuth2 parameters required by the specification, as shown on this screenshot:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/password-grant-token-request.png)
1
|
POST /connect/token
|
If your request is valid, an access token, an identity token and a refresh token should be returned:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/password-grant-token-response.png)
While the access token and the refresh token are encrypted and opaque for the client, the identity token can be easily deserialized using a tool like jwt.io
:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/jwt-io-identity-token.png)
Making an API request using the access token issued by ASOS
To attach an access token to an API request, click on the Headers
tab and add a new Authorization
header. Make sure to prefix the header value with the Bearer
scheme (plus a space separating the scheme and the access token).
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/api-request.png)
1
|
GET /api/message
|
If the access token is still valid, you should see this exact output message:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/api-response.png)
Retrieving an access token using the authorization code flow
Using the authorization code flow is generally more complicated, but Postman offers a very simple and convenient way to retrieve an access token without having to write a single request.
To start a new authorization flow, click on the Authorization
tab, select OAuth 2.0
and press Get new access token
:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/authorization-code-flow.png)
When the OAuth 2.0 configuration popup appears, select Authorization code
in the dropdown list and populate the required fields by specifying the authorization endpoint
, the token endpoint
, the client identifier
, the callback URL
and optionally, a scope
and a token name
.
When running the sample from a location that is not accessible from Internet, make sure to check the Request access token locally
checkbox.
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/authorization-code-flow-popup.png)
If the request parameters are valid, you should be prompted by the authorization consent form returned by AuthorizationController
:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/authorization-consent.png)
After granting the authorization, Postman will send a token request and retrieve a new access token it will add under the Existing tokens
list:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/authorization-code-flow-response.png)
Select Header
in the dropdown list and press Use token
to tell Postman to attach the access token to the API request, like you manually did in the previous step. If the token is still valid, clicking on Send
will return a successful message:
![](https://kevinchalet.com/2016/07/13/creating-your-own-openid-connect-server-with-asos-testing-your-authorization-server-with-postman/api-response.png)
Next part: Conclusion.