Secure your API with TokenX¶

This how-to guides you through the steps required to secure your API using TokenX:

Grant access to consumers¶

Specify inbound access policies to authorize your consumers:

app.yaml

spec:
  tokenx:
    enabled: true
  accessPolicy:
    inbound:
      rules:
        - application: app-1  # same namespace and cluster

        - application: app-2  # same cluster
          namespace: team-a

        - application: app-3
          namespace: team-b
          cluster: prod-gcp

The above configuration authorizes the following applications:

application app-1 running in the same namespace and same cluster as your application
application app-2 running in the namespace team-a in the same cluster
application app-3 running in the namespace team-b in the cluster prod-gcp

Now that you have granted access to your consumers, they can now exchange tokens for new tokens that target your application. You will need to validate these tokens in your application.

Validate tokens¶

Verify incoming requests from consumers by validating the JWT Bearer token in the Authorization header.

The steps below describe how to validate a token using the token introspection endpoint.

What is the token introspection endpoint?

The token introspection endpoint simplifies the token validation process, but does require a network call.

If your application uses a library or framework that supports validering JWTs, you can alternatively let these handle the validation instead. See the reference page for manually validating tokens.

Send a HTTP POST request to the endpoint found in the NAIS_TOKEN_INTROSPECTION_ENDPOINT environment variable. The request must have a Content-Type header set to either:

application/json or
application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The body of the request should contain the following parameters:

Parameter	Example Value	Description
`identity_provider`	`tokenx`	Always `tokenx`.
`token`	`eyJra...`	The access token you wish to validate.

application/jsonapplication/x-www-form-urlencoded

Token request

POST ${NAIS_TOKEN_INTROSPECTION_ENDPOINT} HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json

{
    "identity_provider": "tokenx",
    "token": "eyJra..."
}

Token request

POST ${NAIS_TOKEN_INTROSPECTION_ENDPOINT} HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

identity_provider=tokenx&
token=eyJra...

The response is always a HTTP 200 OK response with a JSON body.

It always contains the active field, which is a boolean value that indicates whether the token is valid or not.

Success response¶

If the token is valid, the response will additionally contain all the token's claims:

Valid token

{
    "active": true,
    "exp": 1730980893,
    "iat": 1730977293,
    ...
}

Claims are copied verbatim from the token to the response.

Which claims are validated by the endpoint?

The endpoint only validates the token's signature and its standard claims.

Other claims are included in the response, but are not validated. Your application must validate these other claims according to your own requirements.

Error response¶

If the token is invalid, the only additional field in the response is the error field:

Invalid token

{
    "active": false,
    "error": "token is expired"
}

The error field contains a human-readable error message that describes why the token is invalid.