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Azure EasyAuth Provider

The Backstage core-plugin-api package comes with a Microsoft authentication provider that can authenticate users using Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) for PaaS service hosted in Azure that support Easy Auth, such as Azure App Services.

Azure Configuration​

How to configure azure depends on the Azure service you're using to host Backstage.

Azure App Services​

To use EasyAuth with App Services, turn on Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) authentication You must also enable the token store.

The following example shows how to do this via a bicep template:

resource webApp 'Microsoft.Web/sites@2022-03-01' existing = {
  name: 'MY-WEBAPP-NAME'

  resource authConfig 'config' = {
    name: 'authsettingsV2'
    properties: {
      globalValidation: {
        redirectToProvider: 'AzureActiveDirectory'
        requireAuthentication: true
        unauthenticatedClientAction: 'RedirectToLoginPage'
      }
      login: {
        tokenStore: {
          enabled: true
        }
      }
      platform: {
        enabled: true
      }
      identityProviders: {
        azureActiveDirectory: {
          enabled: true
          login: {
            loginParameters: [ 'domain_hint=MYCOMPANY.COM' ]
          }
          registration: {
            clientId: 'CLIENT-ID'
            clientSecretSettingName: 'CLIENT-SECRET-NAME'
            openIdIssuer: 'https://sts.windows.net/${tenant().tenantId}/v2.0'
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration​

Add the following into your app-config.yaml under the root auth configuration:

app-config.yaml
auth:
  providers:
    azureEasyAuth:
      signIn:
        resolvers:
          # See https://backstage.io/docs/auth/microsoft/easy-auth#resolvers for more resolvers
          - resolver: idMatchingUserEntityAnnotation

Resolvers​

This provider includes several resolvers out of the box that you can use:

  • emailMatchingUserEntityProfileEmail: Matches the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching spec.profile.email. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • emailLocalPartMatchingUserEntityName: Matches the local part of the email address from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching name. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
  • idMatchingUserEntityAnnotation: Matches the user Id from the auth provider with the User entity that has a matching graph.microsoft.com/user-id annotation. If no match is found it will throw a NotFoundError.
Note

The resolvers will be tried in order, but will only be skipped if they throw a NotFoundError.

If these resolvers do not fit your needs you can build a custom resolver, this is covered in the Building Custom Resolvers section of the Sign-in Identities and Resolvers documentation.

Backend Installation​

To add the provider to the backend we will first need to install the package by running this command:

from your Backstage root directory
yarn --cwd packages/backend add @backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-azure-easyauth-provider

Then we will need to this line:

in packages/backend/src/index.ts
backend.add(import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend'));
backend.add(
  import('@backstage/plugin-auth-backend-module-azure-easyauth-provider'),
);

Adding the provider to the Backstage frontend​

See Sign-In with Proxy Providers for pointers on how to set up the sign-in page, and to also make it work smoothly for local development. You'll use azureEasyAuth as the provider name.

If you provide a custom sign in resolver, you can skip the signIn block entirely.