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Social Login
This document explains how to configure
Okta manages the connection to the IdP for your app, sitting between your app 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
Note: Okta also supports other services such as directories and credential providers. See the Okta Integration Network Catalog (opens new window) to browse all integrations by use case.
Learning outcomes
Configure a social Identity Provider so that your users can quickly sign up or sign in to your app 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 for the app that you want to add authentication to. You can create an OIDC app integration (opens new window) or use an existing one.
- An account with
Create an app at the Identity Provider
Create the Identity Provider in Okta
To add
In the Admin Console, go to Security > Identity Providers.
Click Add Identity Provider, and then select
Click Next.
In the General Settings section, define the following:
In the optional Authentication Settings section:
- Account Link Policy: Specify whether Okta automatically links the user's IdP account with a matching Okta account. See Account link.
Click Finish. A page appears that displays the IdP's configuration.
Note: If you want to use a specific Redirect Domain instead of the Dynamic default, you can use either Org URL or Custom URL. See
issuerMode
in the Identity Provider attributes section.
Note: See the Identity Providers API (opens new window) for request and response examples when creating an IdP in Okta using the API.
Account link
You can automatically link external IdP accounts to Okta accounts when the user signs in using the external IdP. If Account Link Policy is set to Automatic (AUTO
), Okta searches the Universal Directory for a user's profile to link. The user profile is found when the IdP username value (email) passed by the IdP matches the Match against value (username). See Account Linking and JIT Provisioning.
To remove an existing account link or validate account linking with every sign-in flow, Okta recommends that you make a DELETE
call to the /api/v1/idps/{idpId}/users/{userId}
endpoint to remove the link between the Okta user and the IdP user before authentication.
If Account Link Policy is disabled, no account linking occurs. You can manually create an account link without a transaction by making a POST
call to the /api/v1/idps/{idps}/users/{userId}
endpoint.
See Add an Identity Provider (opens new window) for API examples of account linking JSON payloads.
For security best practices, consider disabling account linking after all existing users from the external IdP have signed in to your Okta org. At this point, all links have been created. After you disable linking, and JIT provisioning is enabled, Okta adds new users that are created in the external IdP.
Test the integration
You can test your integration by configuring a routing rule (opens new window) to use
Alternatively, you can use the Authorize URL to simulate the authorization flow. The Okta Identity Provider that you created generated an authorize URL with several 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 theclient_id
value from your Okta app integration. This isn’t theclient_id
from the Identity Provider. For example,0oawjqpb2wcUAWM8C0h7
.response_type
: Determines which flow is used. For the Implicit flow, useid_token
. For the Authorization Code flow, usecode
.response_mode
: Determines how the authorization response is returned. Usefragment
.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 theopenid
scope. You can request any of the standard OpenID Connect scopes about users, such asprofile
andemail
and 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 withhttps
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 (opens new window).
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
To test your authorization URL, enter the complete authorization URL in a browser. Do this in your browser's privacy or incognito mode to avoid false positive or negative results.
If everything is configured properly:
- The user is redirected to the Identity Provider's sign-in page.
- After successful authentication, the user is redirected to the redirect URI that you specified, along with an
#id_token=
fragment in the URL. The value of this parameter is your Okta OpenID Connect ID token.
If something is configured incorrectly, the authorization response contains error information to help you resolve the issue.
Add the Identity Provider to the embedded Okta Sign-In Widget
Note: This section only applies to Classic Engine.
If you're using Identity Engine, the Sign in with IdP option is available on the widget after you create the Identity Provider in your Okta org and configure 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 Upgrade your widget for Identity Engine upgrade considerations.
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
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:
- In the Admin Console, go to Security > Identity Providers.
- On the Identity Providers page, select the Identity Provider tab.
- Select your Identity Provider from the list. IdP ID contains your Identity Provider ID.
Add the Identity Provider to the custom Okta-hosted sign-in page
Note: This section only applies to Classic Engine.
If you're using Identity Engine, the Sign in with IdP option is available on the widget after you create an Identity Provider in your Okta org and configure the routing rule (opens new window). See Identify your Okta solution (opens new window) to determine your Okta version.
If you configured a custom Okta-hosted Sign-In Widget, you can add a Sign in with var config = OktaUtil.getSignInWidgetConfig();
line in the Sign-in page code editor of the Admin Console.
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.
Next steps
You 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.