Authentication with Spring Boot, Angular and Keycloak (with roles)

In this article, we will explore how to set up authentication using Spring Boot, Angular, and Keycloak, with the ability to assign roles to users for access control.

Setting up Spring Boot

First, we need to set up our Spring Boot application to work with Keycloak. We can do this by adding the Keycloak Spring Boot Starter dependency to our project. This will allow our Spring Boot application to authenticate users against a Keycloak server.

Configuring Keycloak

We also need to configure our Spring Boot application to connect to our Keycloak server. This involves setting up the Keycloak realm, client, and user roles in our Keycloak server, and then configuring our Spring Boot application to connect to this Keycloak setup.

Setting up Angular

Next, we need to set up our Angular application to work with Keycloak for authentication. We can do this by using the keycloak-angular library, which provides integration between our Angular application and the Keycloak server.

Handling Roles

Once we have set up authentication with Keycloak in our Spring Boot and Angular applications, we can then assign roles to users in Keycloak to control access to different parts of our applications. This can be done by creating roles in Keycloak and assigning these roles to users, and then using Keycloak’s role-based access control to enforce these roles in our applications.

Conclusion

By setting up authentication with Spring Boot, Angular, and Keycloak, and using Keycloak’s role-based access control, we can create a secure and robust authentication and authorization system for our applications. This allows us to control access to different parts of our applications based on the roles assigned to users, providing a secure and controlled environment for our users.