For testing purposes or during development it might be convenient to create self-signed certificates. To get started, execute the following command to create a certificate:

$ keytool -genkey -alias dataflow -keyalg RSA -keystore dataflow.keystore \
          -validity 3650 -storetype JKS \
          -dname "CN=localhost, OU=Spring, O=Pivotal, L=Kailua-Kona, ST=HI, C=US"  
          -keypass dataflow -storepass dataflow

Then add the following to your application.yml file:

server:
  port: 8443
  ssl:
    enabled: true
    key-alias: dataflow
    key-store: "/your/path/to/dataflow.keystore"
    key-store-type: jks
    key-store-password: dataflow
    key-password: dataflow

This is all that’s needed for the Data Flow Server. Once you start the server, you should be able to access it via https://localhost:8443/. As this is a self-signed certificate, you will hit a warning in your browser, that you need to ignore.

By default self-signed certificates are an issue for the Shell and additional steps are necessary to make the Shell work with self-signed certificates. Two options are available:

Add the self-signed certificate to the JVM truststore

In order to use the JVM truststore option, we need to export the previously created certificate from the keystore:

$ keytool -export -alias dataflow -keystore dataflow.keystore -file dataflow_cert -storepass dataflow

Next, we need to create a truststore which the Shell will use:

$ keytool -importcert -keystore dataflow.truststore -alias dataflow -storepass dataflow -file dataflow_cert -noprompt

Now, you are ready to launch the Data Flow Shell using the following JVM arguments:

$ java -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=dataflow \
       -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/path/to/dataflow.truststore \
       -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=jks \
       -jar spring-cloud-dataflow-shell-1.1.2.RELEASE.jar

	Tip
	In case you run into trouble establishing a connection via SSL, you can enable additional logging by using and setting the javax.net.debug JVM argument to ssl.

Don’t forget to target the Data Flow Server with:

dataflow:> dataflow config server https://localhost:8443/

Skip Certificate Validation

Alternatively, you can also bypass the certification validation by providing the optional command-line parameter --dataflow.skip-ssl-validation=true.

Using this command-line parameter, the shell will accept any (self-signed) SSL certificate.

	Warning
	If possible you should avoid using this option. Disabling the trust manager defeats the purpose of SSL and makes you vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

By default Spring Boot allows you to only specify one single user. Spring Cloud Data Flow also supports the listing of more than one user in a configuration file, as described below. Each user must be assigned a password and one or more roles:

security:
  basic:
    enabled: true
    realm: Spring Cloud Data Flow
dataflow:
  security:
    authentication:
      file:
        enabled: true                                                 
        users:                                                        
          bob: bobspassword, ROLE_ADMIN                               
          alice: alicepwd, ROLE_VIEW, ROLE_CREATE

	Important
	As of Spring Cloud Data Flow 1.1, roles are not supported, yet (specified roles are ignored). Due to an issue in Spring Security, though, at least one role must be provided.

Spring Cloud Data Flow also supports authentication against an LDAP server (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), providing support for the following 2 modes:

When the LDAP authentication option is activated, the default single user mode is turned off.

In direct bind mode, a pattern is defined for the user’s distinguished name (DN), using a placeholder for the username. The authentication process derives the distinguished name of the user by replacing the placeholder and use it to authenticate a user against the LDAP server, along with the supplied password. You can set up LDAP direct bind as follows:

security:
  basic:
    enabled: true
    realm: Spring Cloud Data Flow
dataflow:
  security:
    authentication:
      ldap:
        enabled: true                                                 
        url: ldap://ldap.example.com:3309                             
        userDnPattern: uid={0},ou=people,dc=example,dc=com            

The search and bind mode involves connecting to an LDAP server, either anonymously or with a fixed account, and searching for the distinguished name of the authenticating user based on its username, and then using the resulting value and the supplied password for binding to the LDAP server. This option is configured as follows:

security:
  basic:
    enabled: true
    realm: Spring Cloud Data Flow
dataflow:
  security:
    authentication:
      ldap:
        enabled: true                                                 
        url: ldap://localhost:10389                                   
        managerDn: uid=admin,ou=system                                
        managerPassword: secret                                       
        userSearchBase: ou=otherpeople,dc=example,dc=com              
        userSearchFilter: uid={0}                                     

	Tip
	For more information, please also see the chapter LDAP Authentication of the Spring Security reference guide.

LDAP Transport Security

When connecting to an LDAP server, you typically (In the LDAP world) have 2 options in order to establish a connection to an LDAP server securely:

• LDAP over SSL (LDAPs)
• Start Transport Layer Security (Start TLS is defined in RFC2830)

As of Spring Cloud Data Flow 1.1.0 only LDAPs is supported out-of-the-box. When using official certificates no special configuration is necessary, in order to connect to an LDAP Server via LDAPs. Just change the url format to ldaps, e.g. ldaps://localhost:636.

In case of using self-signed certificates, the setup for your Spring Cloud Data Flow server becomes slightly more complex. The setup is very similar to Section 17.1.1, “Using Self-Signed Certificates” (Please read first) and Spring Cloud Data Flow needs to reference a trustStore in order to work with your self-signed certificates.

	Important
	While useful during development and testing, please never use self-signed certificates in production!

Ultimately you have to provide a set of system properties to reference the trustStore and its credentials when starting the server:

$ java -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword=dataflow \
       -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=/path/to/dataflow.truststore \
       -Djavax.net.ssl.trustStoreType=jks \
       -jar spring-cloud-starter-dataflow-server-local-1.1.2.RELEASE.jar

As mentioned above, another option to connect to an LDAP server securely is via Start TLS. In the LDAP world, LDAPs is technically even considered deprecated in favor of Start TLS. However, this option is currently not supported out-of-the-box by Spring Cloud Data Flow.

Please follow the following issue tracker ticket to track its implementation. You may also want to look at the Spring LDAP reference documentation chapter on Custom DirContext Authentication Processing for further details.

If your OAuth2 provider supports the Password Grant Type you can start the Data Flow Shell with:

$ java -jar spring-cloud-dataflow-shell-1.1.2.RELEASE.jar \
  --dataflow.uri=http://localhost:9393 \
  --dataflow.username=my_username --dataflow.password=my_password

	Note
	Keep in mind that when authentication for Spring Cloud Data Flow is enabled, the underlying OAuth2 provider must support the Password OAuth2 Grant Type, if you want to use the Shell.

From within the Data Flow Shell you can also provide credentials using:

dataflow config server --uri http://localhost:9393 --username my_username --password my_password

Once successfully targeted, you should see the following output:

dataflow:>dataflow config info
dataflow config info

╔═══════════╤═══════════════════════════════════════╗
║Credentials│[username='my_username, password=****']║
╠═══════════╪═══════════════════════════════════════╣
║Result     │                                       ║
║Target     │http://localhost:9393                  ║
╚═══════════╧═══════════════════════════════════════╝