Add a social Identity Provider

GitHub

This document explains how to configure

GitHub

as an external social Identity Provider (IdP) for your application by creating an application on

GitHub

, creating an Identity Provider in Okta, testing the configuration, and creating a sign-in button.

Okta manages the connection to the IdP for your application, sitting between your application and the IdP that authenticates your users. The industry-standard term for this is Inbound Federation. When a user signs in, you can link the user’s

GitHub

account to an existing Okta user profile or choose to create a new user profile using Just-In-Time (JIT) provisioning.

Note: We also support additional services such as directories and credential providers. See the Okta Integration Network Catalog (opens new window) to browse all integrations by use case.

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Learning outcomes

Configure a social Identity Provider so that your users can quickly sign up or sign in to your application by using their social Identity Provider account.

What you need

• Okta Developer Edition organization (opens new window)
• An OpenID Connect (OIDC) app integration in Okta. You can create a new OIDC app integration using AIW (opens new window) or use an existing one.
• An account with

  GitHub (opens new window)

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Create an app at the Identity Provider

1. Create and register

   an OAuth (opens new window) app

   at

   GitHub

   .

2. When you create an application at the IdP, you need to provide a redirect URI for authentication.

   The redirect URI sent in the authorize request from the client needs to match the redirect URI set at the IdP. This URI is where the IdP sends the authentication response (the access token and the ID token). It needs to be a secure domain that you own. This URI has the same structure for most IdPs in Okta and is constructed using your Okta subdomain and the callback endpoint.

   For example, if your Okta subdomain is called company, then the URI would be https://company.okta.com/oauth2/v1/authorize/callback. If you have configured a custom domain in your Okta org, use that value to construct your redirect URI, such as https://login.company.com/oauth2/v1/authorize/callback.

3. Save the generated

   GitHub

   client ID and client secret values. You need them to configure your Identity Provider in Okta.

Create the Identity Provider in Okta

To add

GitHub

as an Identity Provider in Okta:

1. In the Admin Console, go to Security > Identity Providers.

2. Click Add Identity Provider, and then select

   GitHub

   IdP.

3. Click Next.

4. In the General Settings section, define the following:

   • Name: Enter a name for the Identity Provider in Okta.
   • Client ID: Paste the generated client ID from your

     GitHub

     application.
   • Client Secret: Paste the generated client secret from your

     GitHub

     application.
   • Scopes: Leave the defaults for a simple sign-in flow. You can also add more scopes. See

     Scopes for OAuth Apps (opens new window)

     .

5. Click Finish.

Test the integration

You can test your integration by configuring a routing rule (opens new window) to use

GitHub

as the Identity Provider.

Alternatively, you can use the Authorize URL to simulate the authorization flow. The Okta Identity Provider that you created generated an authorize URL with a number of blank parameters that you can fill in to test the flow with the Identity Provider. The authorize URL initiates the authorization flow that authenticates the user with the Identity Provider.

In the URL, replace ${yourOktaDomain} with your org's base URL, and then replace the following values:

• client_id: Use the client_id value from your Okta app integration. This is not the client_id from the Identity Provider. For example, 0oawjqpb2wcUAWM8C0h7.

• response_type: Determines which flow is used. For the Implicit flow, use id_token. For the Authorization Code flow, use code.

• response_mode: Determines how the authorization response is returned. Use fragment.

• scope: Determines the claims that are returned in the ID token. Include the scopes that you want to request authorization for and separate each with a %20 (space character). You need to include at least the openid scope. You can request any of the standard OpenID Connect scopes about users, such as profile and email as well as any custom scopes specific to your Identity Provider.

• redirect_uri: The location where Okta returns a browser after the user finishes authenticating with their Identity Provider. This URL must start with https and must match one of the redirect URIs that you configured in the previous section.

• state: Protects against cross-site request forgery (CSRF). This can be set to any value.

• nonce: A string included in the returned ID token. Use it to associate a client session with an ID token and to mitigate replay attacks. This can be set to any value.

For a full explanation of all of these parameters, see: /authorize Request parameters.

An example of a complete URL looks like this:

https://${yourOktaDomain}/oauth2/v1/authorize?idp=${idp_id}&client_id=${client_id}&response_type=id_token&response_mode=fragment&scope=openid%20email&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2FyourAppUrlHere.com%2F&state=WM6D&nonce=YsG76jo

Handle users without email addresses

GitHub doesn’t always provide email addresses for users that it authenticates, such as when the GitHub setting Keep email addresses private is enabled. However, Okta requires an email address for its users to be able to sign in. You can support users who don't have email addresses by using information from GitHub to generate email addresses for them.

For example, you might generate email addresses using the example.com domain. This ensures that your GitHub users have email addresses that Okta can use, but can be easily identified as invalid should you ever want to replace them with valid email addresses. They're guaranteed to be invalid as example.com is a reserved domain. See Reserved Top Level DNS Names (RFC2606) (opens new window) for more information on reserved domains.

You can customize this mapping by using the Okta Expression Language. See Profile Editor (opens new window) for more information on attribute mapping.

To generate user login values and email addresses for GitHub users, do the following:

1. From the Admin Console, click Security.

2. Click Identity Providers.

3. Locate GitHub in the list of providers, then click Configure > Edit Profile and Mappings.

4. Click Mappings.

5. Select the tab that maps a GitHub user to an Okta user.

6. Set the expression that maps to the Okta user's login value to:

   appuser.email == null ? appuser.externalId + '@github.example.com' : appuser.email
   

7. Set the expression that maps to the Okta user's email value to:

   appuser.email == null ? appuser.externalId + '@github.example.com' : appuser.email
   

8. Click Save Mappings

Similarly, you can map the IdP username by doing the following:

1. From the Admin Console, click Security.

2. Click Identity Providers.

3. Locate GitHub in the list of providers, and then click Configure > Configure Identity Provider.

4. Set the expression for IdP Username to:

   idpuser.email == null ? idpuser.externalId + '@github.example.com' : idpuser.email
   

5. Click Update Identity Provider

Add the Identity Provider to the Okta Sign-In Widget

Note: This section is only for Okta Classic Engine. If you are using Okta Identity Engine, the Sign in with IdP option is available on the widget after you've created the Identity Provider in your Okta org and configured the routing rule (opens new window). No additional code is required. See Identify your Okta solution (opens new window) to determine your Okta version and see Upgrade your widget for upgrade considerations to Identity Engine.

The Okta Sign-In Widget (opens new window) is an embeddable JavaScript widget that reproduces the look and behavior of the standard Okta sign-in page. You can add a Sign in with

GitHub

button to the widget by adding the following code to your Okta Sign-In Widget configuration. Replace Your_IDP_ID with the Identity Provider ID from your Identity Provider that you created in Okta in the Create the Identity Provider in Okta section.

To find your Identity Provider ID:

1. In the Admin console, go to Security > Identity Providers.
2. On the Identity Providers page, select the Identity Provider tab.
3. Select your Identity Provider from the list. IdP ID contains your Identity Provider ID.

    config.idps= [
        { type: 'GITHUB', id: 'Your_IDP_ID' }
    ];
    config.idpDisplay = "SECONDARY";

Next steps

You should now understand how to add a social Identity Provider and have successfully added and tested the integration.

To map Okta attributes to app attributes, use the Profile Editor (opens new window).

To add another Identity Provider, start by choosing an external Identity Provider.