WORKERS AHEAD!

You are viewing the development documentation for the Apereo CAS server. The functionality presented here is not officially released yet. This is a work in progress and will be continually updated as development moves forward. You are most encouraged to test the changes presented.

Password Management

If authentication fails due to a rejected password policy, CAS is able to intercept that request and allow the user to update the account password in place. The password management features of CAS are rather modest, and alternatively should the functionality provide inadequate for your policy, you may always redirect CAS to use a separate and standalone application that is fully in charge of managing the account password and associated flows.

CAS may also allow users to reset their passwords voluntarily. Those who have forgotten their account password may receive a secure link with a time-based expiration policy at their registered email address and/or phone. The link will allow the user to provide answers to his/her pre-defined security questions, which if successfully done, will allow the user to next reset their password and login again. You may also specify a pattern for accepted passwords.

By default, after a user has successfully changed their password they will be redirected to the login screen to enter their new password and log in. CAS can also be configured to automatically log the user in after a successful change. This behavior can be altered via CAS settings.

Support is enabled by including the following dependency in the WAR overlay:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apereo.cas</groupId>
  <artifactId>cas-server-support-pm-webflow</artifactId>
  <version>${cas.version}</version>
</dependency>

implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-pm-webflow:${project.'cas.version'}"

dependencyManagement {
  imports {
    mavenBom "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-bom:${project.'cas.version'}"
  }
}

dependencies {  
  implementation "org.apereo.cas:cas-server-support-pm-webflow"
}

YAGNI

You do not need to explicitly include this module in your configuration and overlays. This is just to teach you that it exists.

Account Management

CAS may also allow individual end-users to update certain aspects of their account that relate to password management in a mini portal like setup, such as resetting the password or updating security questions, etc. Please see this guide for more details.

Configuration

To learn more about available notification options, please see this guide or this guide.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Required in the CAS configuration metadata. This flag indicates that the presence of the setting may be needed to activate or affect the behavior of the CAS feature and generally should be reviewed, possibly owned and adjusted. If the setting is assigned a default value, you do not need to strictly put the setting in your copy of the configuration, but should review it nonetheless to make sure it matches your deployment expectations.}

_{The configuration settings listed below are tagged as Optional in the CAS configuration metadata. This
flag indicates that the presence of the setting
is not immediately necessary in the end-user CAS configuration, because a default value is assigned or
the activation of the feature is not conditionally controlled by the setting value. You should only include this field in your
configuration if you need to modify the default value.}

Configuration Metadata

The collection of configuration properties listed in this section are automatically generated from the CAS source and components that contain the actual field definitions, types, descriptions, modules, etc. This metadata may not always be 100% accurate, or could be lacking details and sufficient explanations.

Be Selective

This section is meant as a guide only. Do NOT copy/paste the entire collection of settings into your CAS configuration; rather pick only the properties that you need. Do NOT enable settings unless you are certain of their purpose and do NOT copy settings into your configuration only to keep them as reference. All these ideas lead to upgrade headaches, maintenance nightmares and premature aging.

YAGNI

Note that for nearly ALL use cases, declaring and configuring properties listed here is sufficient. You should NOT have to explicitly massage a CAS XML/Java/etc configuration file to design an authentication handler, create attribute release policies, etc. CAS at runtime will auto-configure all required changes for you. If you are unsure about the meaning of a given CAS setting, do NOT turn it on without hesitation. Review the codebase or better yet, ask questions to clarify the intended behavior.

Naming Convention

Property names can be specified in very relaxed terms. For instance cas.someProperty, cas.some-property, cas.some_property are all valid names. While all forms are accepted by CAS, there are certain components (in CAS and other frameworks used) whose activation at runtime is conditional on a property value, where this property is required to have been specified in CAS configuration using kebab case. This is both true for properties that are owned by CAS as well as those that might be presented to the system via an external library or framework such as Spring Boot, etc.

When possible, properties should be stored in lower-case kebab format, such as cas.property-name=value. The only possible exception to this rule is when naming actuator endpoints; The name of the actuator endpoints (i.e. ssoSessions) MUST remain in camelCase mode.

Settings and properties that are controlled by the CAS platform directly always begin with the prefix cas. All other settings are controlled and provided to CAS via other underlying frameworks and may have their own schemas and syntax. BE CAREFUL with the distinction. Unrecognized properties are rejected by CAS and/or frameworks upon which CAS depends. This means if you somehow misspell a property definition or fail to adhere to the dot-notation syntax and such, your setting is entirely refused by CAS and likely the feature it controls will never be activated in the way you intend.

Validation

Configuration properties are automatically validated on CAS startup to report issues with configuration binding, specially if defined CAS settings cannot be recognized or validated by the configuration schema. The validation process is on by default and can be skipped on startup using a special system property SKIP_CONFIG_VALIDATION that should be set to true. Additional validation processes are also handled via Configuration Metadata and property migrations applied automatically on startup by Spring Boot and family.

Indexed Settings

CAS settings able to accept multiple values are typically documented with an index, such as cas.some.setting[0]=value. The index [0] is meant to be incremented by the adopter to allow for distinct multiple configuration blocks.

Password Reset

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

Configuration Metadata

Be Selective

YAGNI

Naming Convention

Validation

Indexed Settings

reCAPTCHA Integration

Password reset attempts can be protected and integrated with Google reCAPTCHA. This requires the presence of reCAPTCHA settings for the basic integration and instructing the password management flow to turn on and verify requests via reCAPTCHA.

The following settings and properties are available from the CAS configuration catalog:

Configuration Metadata

Be Selective

YAGNI

Naming Convention

Validation

Indexed Settings

Forgot Username

To learn more, please see this guide.

Password History

To learn more, please see this guide.

Storage

User accounts can be found via the following ways.

Storage	Instructions
JSON	See this guide.
Groovy	See this guide.
LDAP	See this guide.
JDBC	See this guide.
REST	See this guide.
Custom	See this guide.