If you’re an OutSystems user, you’re probably familiar with the platform’s integration and extensibility capabilities.
For several of the most popular authentication providers, OutSystems offers out-of-the-box integrations, allowing you to set them up in just a few clicks, such as Azure AD (or ADB2C), Okta, SAML 2.0, and Active Directory, to name a few.
These pre-built structures speed up the process, but you’re not limited to them. You can find additional connectors to authentication providers in the Forge, OutSystems repository of pre-built and reusable components.
This way, organizations can configure OutSystems authentication mechanisms to work with their preferred enterprise authentication platform.
Recently, we’ve been asked quite often about AWS Cognito. So, I decided to make our users' lives easier and show them how to implement this external authentication in OutSystems applications. You'll be able to do it in just about five minutes of reading plus fifteen minutes of implementation.
That’s what we call “speed” around here.
In this article, I’ll show you how to integrate Cognito and OutSystems. You’ll need an OutSystems and a Cognito account. Note that there are some steps, mainly from Cognito side, that are quite important because once saved, you cannot change them.
I’ll also use Forge components that were developed by our developer community to speed up development.
Once the configuration from both sides is done, I’ll show a quick customization you need to implement on your application to close the loop.
Amazon Cognito, or AWS Cognito, is the Amazon IdP (Identity Provider) solution.
It provides user authentication, authorization, user management, access control, synchronization, and analytics capabilities for web and mobile applications, all in a centralized tool.
You can try it for free, but you need an AWS account.
Assuming you already have an AWS account in the management console, search for Cognito and navigate to the Cognito landing page.
On this page, you’ll see the list of pools you have (if any) and where you can create new ones.
Creating a pool is a six-step process.
It’s quite straightforward, but there’s some information that you need to configure correctly because, once the pool is created, you cannot change it. Fear not; AWS will pop a message letting you know the fields that cannot be changed afterward.
Here, I’ll summarize the most important and trickier steps to help you out:
Once we have everything ready from Cognito’s side, it is time to start implementing it from our side.
To help with this task, our community has contributed two components that are available in the Forge:
Install and publish both components on your infrastructure, open the Applications screen from AWS Cognito User Pools Connector Reactive app (<<[enter your environment].outsystemscloud.com/AWSCognitoUserPoolsConnectorReactiv/Applications>>) and click on Add application button.
You will need to fill it in with information about the pool you have just created on AWS. It will look something like this:
Save it.
Once everything is set in the AWS Cognito components, it is time to make a few changes to the app you want the users to log in using Cognito.
In your app, go to AWS Cognito User Pools Connector Core app >> Server Action >> GetLoginURL.
Then, change your Common >> OnException Action.
With this change, whenever an unauthenticated user tries to access your app, they will be directed to Amazon Cognito UI.
And after a successful login, they’ll be redirected to your application.
s you can see, a few steps are involved in this configuration, but you can complete it in minutes.
special thanks to Marcelo Ferreira — OutSystems MVP — for dedicating time and effort to create those two components and making our lives much easier.
f you have any additional questions, hit us via chat or forum. Our whole community will be glad to help.
