For our new friends:

Logto is an Auth0 alternative designed for modern apps and SaaS products. It offers both Cloud and Open-source services to help you quickly launch your identity and management (IAM) system. Enjoy authentication, authorization, and multi-tenant management all in one.

We recommend starting with a free development tenant on Logto Cloud. This allows you to explore all the features easily.

In this article, we will go through the steps to quickly build the SAML sign-in experience (user authentication) with WordPress plugin and Logto.

Prerequisites

• A running Logto instance. Check out the introduction page to get started.
• Basic knowledge of WordPress plugin.
• A usable SAML account.

Create an application in Logto

Logto is based on OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication and OAuth 2.0 authorization. It supports federated identity management across multiple applications, commonly called Single Sign-On (SSO).

To create your Traditional web application, simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Logto Console. In the "Get started" section, click the "View all" link to open the application frameworks list. Alternatively, you can navigate to Logto Console > Applications, and click the "Create application" button.
2. In the opening modal, click the "Traditional web" section or filter all the available "Traditional web" frameworks using the quick filter checkboxes on the left. Click the "WordPress" framework card to start creating your application.
3. Enter the application name, e.g., "Bookstore," and click "Create application".

🎉 Ta-da! You just created your first application in Logto. You'll see a congrats page which includes a detailed integration guide. Follow the guide to see what the experience will be in your application.

Integrate WordPress with Logto

Install the plugin

info:

At the moment, our plugin is still under review and not available in the WordPress plugin directory. We'll update this page once it's available.

From upload

1. Download the Logto WordPress plugin from one of the following links:
   • Latest release: Download the file which name in the format of logto-plugin-<version>.zip.
2. Download the plugin ZIP file.
3. Go to Plugins > Add New in your WordPress admin panel.
4. Click Upload Plugin.
5. Select the downloaded ZIP file and click Install Now.
6. Click Activate.

Configure the plugin

Now you should be able to see the Logto menu in your WordPress admin panel sidebar. Click Logto > Settings to configure the plugin.

note:

You should have a traditional web application created in Logto Console before configuring the plugin. If you haven't created one, please refer to Integrate Logto into your application for more information.

The minimum configuration to get started for the plugin is:

• Logto endpoint: The endpoint of your Logto tenant.
• App ID: The app ID of your Logto application.
• App secret: One of the valid app secrets of your Logto application.

All values can be found on the application details page in Logto Console.

After filling in the values, click Save Changes (scroll down to the bottom of the page if you can't find the button).

Configure redirect URI

The redirect URI is the URL to which Logto will redirect users after they have authenticated; and the post sign-out redirect URI is the URL to which Logto will redirect users after they have logged out.

Here's a non-normative sequence diagram to illustrate the sign-in flow:

Here's how the sign-out flow looks like in a non-normative sequence diagram:

To learn more about why redirect is needed, see Sign-in experience explained.

In our case, we need to configure both redirect URIs in your Logto Console. To find the redirect URI, go to the Logto > Settings page in your WordPress admin panel. You'll see the Redirect URI and Post sign-out redirect URI fields.

1. Copy the Redirect URI and Post sign-out redirect URI values and paste them into the Redirect URIs and Post sign-out redirect URIs fields in your Logto Console.
2. Click Save changes in Logto Console.

Checkpoint: Test your WordPress website

Now you can test your Logto integration in your WordPress website:

1. Open an incognito browser window if needed.
2. Visit your WordPress website and click the Log in link if applicable; or directly visit the login page (e.g., https://example.com/wp-login.php).
3. The page should redirect you to the Logto sign-in page.
4. Complete the sign-in or sign-up process.
5. After successful authentication, you should be redirected back to your WordPress website and logged in automatically.
6. Click the Log out link to log out of your WordPress website.
7. You should be redirected to the Logto sign-out page, then back to your WordPress website.
8. You should be logged out of your WordPress website.

To learn more about the WordPress plugin settings, see WordPress quick start.

Add SAML connector

To enable quick sign-in and improve user conversion, connect with WordPress as an identity provider. The Logto social connector helps you establish this connection in minutes by allowing several parameter inputs.

To add a social connector, simply follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Console > Connectors > Social Connectors.
2. Click "Add social connector" and select "SAML".
3. Follow the README guide and complete required fields and customize settings.

note:

If you are following the in-place Connector guide, you can skip the next section.

Set up Standard SAML app

Create social IdP's account and register SAML application (IdP)

Let's go through configurations of SAML connector.

Before we kicking off, you can go to a social identity provider which supports SAML protocol and create your own account. Okta, OneLogin, Salesforce and some other platforms support authentication based on SAML protocol.

If your IdP mandate the encryption of SAML assertion and receiving of signed authentication requests, you should generate your private key and corresponding certificate using RSA algorithm. Keep the private key for your SP use and upload the certificate to IdP.

You also need to configure the ACS (Assertion Consumer Service) URL as ${your_logto_origin}/api/authn/saml/${connector_id} to handle IdP's SAML assertion. Where you can find your connectorId at SAML connector's details page in Logto's Admin Console.

note:

Per current Logto's design, we only support Redirect-binding for sending authentication request and POST-binding for receiving SAML assertion. Although this sounds not cool, but we believe that the current design can handle most of your use cases. If you have any problems, feel free to reach out!

Configure SAML connector (SP)

In this section, we will introduce each attribute in detail.

entityID Required

entityID (i.e. issuer) is Entity identifier. It is used to identify your entity (SAML SP entity), and match the equivalence in each SAML request/response.

signInEndpoint Required

The IdP's endpoint that you send SAML authentication requests to. Usually, you can find this value in IdP details page (i.e. IdP's SSO URL or Login URL).

x509Certificate Required

The x509 certificate generated from IdPs private key, IdP is expected to have this value available.

The content of the certificate comes with -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- header and -----END CERTIFICATE----- tail.

idpMetadataXml Required

The field is used to place contents from your IdP metadata XML file.

note:

The XML parser we are using does not support customized namespace. If the IdP metadata comes with namespace, you should manually remove them. For namespace of XML file, see reference.

assertionConsumerServiceUrl Required

The assertion consumer service (ACS) URL is the SP's endpoint to receive IdP's SAML Assertion POST requests. As we mentioned in previous part, it is usually configured at IdP settings but some IdP get this value from SAML authentication requests, we hence also add this value as a REQUIRED field. It's value should look like ${your_logto_origin}/api/authn/saml/${connector_id}.

signAuthnRequest

The boolean value that controls whether SAML authentication request should be signed, whose default value is false.

encryptAssertion

encryptAssertion is a boolean value that indicates if IdP will encrypt SAML assertion, with default value false.

note:

The signAuthnRequest and encryptAssertion attributes should align with corresponding parameters of IdP setting, otherwise error will be thrown to show that configuration does not match. All SAML responses need to be signed.

requestSignatureAlgorithm

This should be aligned with the signature algorithms of IdP so that Logto can verify the signature of the SAML assertion. Its value should be either http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1, http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256 or http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha512 and the default value is http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256.

messageSigningOrder

messageSigningOrder indicates the signing and encrypting order of IdP, it's value should be either sign-then-encrypt or encrypt-then-sign and the default value is sign-then-encrypt.

privateKey and privateKeyPass

privateKey is an OPTIONAL value and is required when signAuthnRequest is true.

privateKeyPass is the password you've set when creating privateKey, required when necessary.

If signAuthnRequest is true, the corresponding certificate generated from privateKey is required by IdP for checking the signature.

encPrivateKey and encPrivateKeyPass

encPrivateKey is an OPTIONAL value and is required when encryptAssertion is true.

encPrivateKeyPass is the password you've set when creating encPrivateKey, required when necessary.

If encryptAssertion is true, the corresponding certificate generated from encPrivateKey is required by IdP for encrypting SAML assertion.

note:

For keys and certificates generation, openssl is a wonderful tool. Here is sample command line that might be helpful:

openssl genrsa -passout pass:${privateKeyPassword} -out ${encryptPrivateKeyFilename}.pem 4096
openssl req -new -x509 -key ${encryptPrivateKeyFilename}.pem -out ${encryptionCertificateFilename}.cer -days 3650

privateKey and encPrivateKey files are enforced to be encoded in pkcs1 scheme as pem string, which means the private key files should start with -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----- and end with -----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----.

nameIDFormat

nameIDFormat is an OPTIONAL attribute that declares the name id format that would respond. The value can be among urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified, urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress, urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:X509SubjectName, urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent and urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient, and the default value is urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:unspecified.

timeout

timeout is the time tolerance for time validation, since the time between your SP entity and IdP entity could be different and network connection may also bring some delay. The unit is in millisecond, and the default value is 5000 (i.e. 5s).

profileMap

Logto also provide a profileMap field that users can customize the mapping from the social vendors' profiles which are usually not standard. Each profileMap keys is Logto's standard user profile field name and corresponding value should be social profiles field name. In current stage, Logto only concern 'id', 'name', 'avatar', 'email' and 'phone' from social profile, only 'id' is REQUIRED and others are optional fields.

Config types

Name	Type	Required	Default Value
signInEndpoint	string	true
x509certificate	string	true
idpMetadataXml	string	true
entityID	string	true
assertionConsumerServiceUrl	string	true
messageSigningOrder	encrypt-then-sign | sign-then-encrypt	false	sign-then-encrypt
requestSignatureAlgorithm	http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#rsa-sha1 | http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256 | http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha512	false	http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmldsig-more#rsa-sha256
signAuthnRequest	boolean	false	false
encryptAssertion	boolean	false	false
privateKey	string	false
privateKeyPass	string	false
nameIDFormat	urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified | urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress | urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:X509SubjectName | urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:persistent | urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:nameid-format:transient	false	urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:unspecified
timeout	number	false	5000
profileMap	ProfileMap	false

ProfileMap fields	Type	Required	Default value
id	string	false	id
name	string	false	name
avatar	string	false	avatar
email	string	false	email
phone	string	false	phone

Reference

• Profiles for the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) V2.0
• samlify - Highly configuarable Node.js SAML 2.0 library for Single Sign On

Save your configuration

Double check you have filled out necessary values in the Logto connector configuration area. Click "Save and Done" (or "Save changes") and the SAML connector should be available now.

Enable SAML connector in Sign-in Experience

Once you create a social connector successfully, you can enable it as a "Continue with SAML" button in Sign-in Experience.

1. Navigate to Console > Sign-in experience > Sign-up and sign-in.
2. (Optional) Choose "Not applicable" for sign-up identifier if you need social login only.
3. Add configured SAML connector to the "Social sign-in" section.

Testing and Validation

Return to your WordPress plugin app. You should now be able to sign in with SAML. Enjoy!

Further readings

End-user flows: Logto provides a out-of-the-box authentication flows including MFA and enterprise SSO, along with powerful APIs for flexible implementation of account settings, security verification, and multi-tenant experience.

Authorization: Authorization defines the actions a user can do or resources they can access after being authenticated. Explore how to protect your API for native and single-page applications and implement Role-based Access Control (RBAC).

Organizations: Particularly effective in multi-tenant SaaS and B2B apps, the organization feature enable tenant creation, member management, organization-level RBAC, and just-in-time-provisioning.

Customer IAM series Our serial blog posts about Customer (or Consumer) Identity and Access Management, from 101 to advanced topics and beyond.