Staffbase Plugins SDK for Node.js.

If you are developing your own plugin for your Staffbase app we describe the authentication flow of a plugin at https://developers.staffbase.com/guide/customplugin-overview/. While this documentation just covers the conceptual ideas of the interface of plugins though – the so called Plugin SSO – we want to provide a library to help you develop your first plugin for Staffbase even faster. This SDK provides the basic functionality to parse and verify a provided token for Node.js.

Installation

The plugin SDK can be fetched from the npm registry (https://www.npmjs.com/package/@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk). You can use npm command line tool to install it locally.

npm install (@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk)

You can also save the module as a local dependency in your project package.json file with the following command:

npm install --save (@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk)

API Reference

For the API reference of this SDK please consult the docs.

Usage

After installation you just need to include the module in your own Javascript Program. The module can be included using the following syntax:

const StaffBaseSSO = require('@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk').sso;

About secret token

Staffbase backend support only RS256 algorithm of JWT which means that the secret you should provide must be the content of public key in the PKCS8 format. This means your public key should start and end with tags:

-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
BASE64 ENCODED DATA
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----

You can use the helper function to read and verify if your public key is in the supported format.

const helpers = require(`@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk`).helpers;
const publicKeyPath = '[[Your File Path]]';
let keySecret;
try {
	keySecret = helpers.readKeyFile(publicKeyPath);
} catch (err) {
	console.log('Error Reading Key file', err);
}

You can then use keySecret to get an instance of StaffBaseSSO class.

Getting the SSOTokenData instance

You should have got your plugin id and Public Key file from Staffbase. After receiving the jwt token from the Staffbase backend, you can use the module to get the contents of the token.

const pluginId = '[As received from Staffbase]';
const publicKey = '[As received from Staffbase]';
const jwtToken = '[As received in current request via jwt query parameter]';
let tokenData = null;
try {
	let SSOContents = new StaffBaseSSO(pluginId, publicKey, jwtToken);
	tokenData = SSOContents.getTokenData();
	console.log('Received token data:', tokenData);
} catch(tokenErr) {
 	console.error('Error decoding token:', tokenErr);
}

If no exception is thrown, you would get a SSOTokenData instance in the tokenData variable which you can use to get contents of the SSO Token.

The following data can be retrieved from the token:

|Helper Name|Token Key| Fetch Function| Description| | --- | --- | --- | --- | |CLAIM_AUDIENCE|aud|getAudience()|Get targeted audience of the token.| |CLAIM_EXPIRE_AT|exp|getExpireAtTime()|Get the time when the token expires.| |CLAIM_NOT_BEFORE|nbf|getNotBeforeTime()|Get the time when the token starts to be valid.| |CLAIM_ISSUED_AT|iat|getIssuedAtTime()|Get the time when the token was issued.| |CLAIM_ISSUER|iss|getIssuer()|Get issuer of the token.| |CLAIM_INSTANCE_ID|instance_id|getInstanceId()|Get the (plugin) instance id for which the token was issued.| |CLAIM_INSTANCE_NAME|instance_name|getInstanceName()|Get the (plugin) instance name for which the token was issued.| |CLAIM_USER_ID|sub|getUserId()|Get the id of the authenticated user.| |CLAIM_USER_EXTERNAL_ID|external_id|getUserExternalId()|Get the id of the user in an external system.| |CLAIM_USER_USERNAME|username|getUserUsername()|Get the username of the user accessing.| |CLAIM_USER_PRIMARY_EMAIL_ADDRESS|primary_email_address|getUserPrimaryEmailAddress()|Get the primary email address of the user accessing.| |CLAIM_USER_FULL_NAME|name|getFullName()|Get either the combined name of the user or the name of the token.| |CLAIM_USER_FIRST_NAME|given_name|getFirstName()|Get the first name of the user accessing.| |CLAIM_USER_LAST_NAME|family_name|getLastName()|Get the last name of the user accessing.| |CLAIM_USER_ROLE|role|getRole()|Get the role of the accessing user.| |CLAIM_ENTITY_TYPE|type|getType()|Get the type of the token.| |CLAIM_THEME_TEXT_COLOR|theming_text|getThemeTextColor()|Get text color used in the overall theme for this audience.| |CLAIM_THEME_BACKGROUND_COLOR|theming_bg|getThemeBackgroundColor()|Get background color used in the overall theme for this audience.| |CLAIM_USER_LOCALE|locale|getLocale()|Get the locale of the requesting user in the format of language tags.|

It is not guaranteed that the token would contain information of all the keys. If there is no value for the corresponding field, the SDK would return a null value.

Using with Express

You can use the provided helper middleware to simply mount it to your express server and get an instance of SSOTokenData class in your Express request object.

You need to provide your Secret Key and Plugin ID to the middleware so it can decode the data. The key can be provided in the constructor or by setting an Environment variables STAFFBASE_SSO_SECRET and STAFFBASE_SSO_AUDIENCE respectively.

To provide the key using constructor:

const ssoSecret = [[YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY_HERE]];
const SSOMiddleware = require('@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk').middleware;
let ssoMiddleWare = ssoMiddleWare(ssoSecret);

After getting an instance of the middleware function, you can simply mount it to your SSO URL of the plugin. If the secret is fine and the middleware is able to decode the token, an instance of SSOTokenData can be used in req.sbSSO.

const ssoSecret = [[YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY_HERE]];
const SSOMiddleware = require('@staffbase/staffbase-plugin-sdk').middleware;
let ssoMiddleWare = SSOMiddleware(ssoSecret);

const redirectURL = '/staffbase/sso/backoffice';
let express = require('express');
let app = express();

// Request Handler for client side of plugin
app.use('/frontEnd', ssoMiddleWare);
app.get('/frontEnd', function(req, res) {
  if (req.sbSSO) {
    // Render the decoded object using Express templating engine
    return res.render('plugin', req.sbSSO);
  }
  return res.end("Unable to decode token data");
});

// Apply middleware on the SSO URL
app.use(redirectURL, ssoMiddleWare);
// Your request handler for admin side of plugin below
app.get(redirectURL, function(req, res) {
  // Middleware was able to decode the token
  // console.log('Got SSO Request from backend', req.query);
  if (req.sbSSO) {
    let ssoTokenData = req.sbSSO;
    // Send back the token data back.
    res.json(ssoTokenData);
    return res.end();
  }
  res.json({
    error: {
      msg: "Unable to get token information."
    }
  });
  return res.end();
});

Generating Express Template

You can also use the create-staffbase-plugin CLI tool to start a template for a basic express server configured with the SDK. For more detail please check out the Project Repo.

Contribution

• Fork it
• Create a branch git checkout -b feature-description
• Put your name into authors.txt
• Commit your changes git commit -am "Added ...."
• Push to the branch git push origin feature-description
• Open a Pull Request

Running Tests

To run the tests a simple # npm test command in the root directory will suffice. The tests are run using the Jest framework. Please consult jest to learn more about writing unit tests for the plugin.

License

Copyright 2017-2021 Staffbase GmbH.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0