How to get logged in user in SAP Cloud Platform (Cloud Foundry)

[miltonc]

Github repository:

https://github.com/miltonchandradas/loggedinuserCF (Branch: part2)

 

Introduction:

• In this session, we will look at how to get the logged in user in SAP Cloud Platform (Cloud Foundry environment)

 

Synopsis:

• SAP Cloud Platform can be set up with any Identity Provider that supports SAML


• When building SAPUI5 applications, we can require that users be authenticated against this Identity Provider


• There may be many instances where you might want to display user specific messages on the home page (for example, some form of welcome message) – and for this you need to know the logged in user


• In Cloud Foundry, the user authentication is handled by the approuter which performs all the complex OAuth flows

 

Steps:

• Unlike the Neo environment, there is no ready made userapi service provided by SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry that provides the logged in user information


• However, the Cloud Foundry provides us with the approuter that performs all the complex OAuth flows


• We can add custom middleware functions that can query the request object and extract the user information inside of it


• The user information itself is stored in a JWT Token that can be retrieved and decoded using a npm package (in our case, we are using jwt-decode)


• Please note that we are not validating the JWT Token, but merely decoding it and getting the user information in the payload of the JWT Token


• Check out https://jwt.io/ for more information on JWT Tokens

 

YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/4ol2zhGP2WQ

 

Conclusion:

• This video should give you a clear idea on how to get the logged in user in SAP Cloud Platform Cloud Foundry environment


• You should also have a good handle on how middleware functions work and how the JWT Tokens are used in the OAuth flows


• If you have any questions or comments, please list them below and I will be happy to answer

 

Previous post:

https://blogs.sap.com/2020/08/23/how-to-consume-destinations-in-sap-cloud-platform-cloud-foundry/

 

Next post:

 

Related post:

https://blogs.sap.com/2020/08/23/how-to-get-logged-in-user-in-sap-cloud-platform-neo-environment/