Preface

Keycloak is an open source Identity and Access Management (IAM) tool with a focus on modern applications such as single-page applications, mobile applications, and REST APIs. Since the first edition of this book was published there have been some big changes to Keycloak.

The Keycloak administration console has received a full make-over with a bigger focus on usability and accessibility requirements.

This distribution of Keycloak is now based on Quarkus rather than the WildFly application server. This brings a new, and much improved, way to configure and deploy Keycloak to different computing environments – from on-premises infrastructure to public and hybrid clouds.

Some of the Keycloak Adapters have been deprecated, and instead Keycloak is now focusing on selecting quality libraries from existing communities; like leveraging built-in support for OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 from whatever language or framework your application is using.

The project was started in 2014 with a strong focus on making it easier for developers to secure their applications. It has since grown into a well-established open source project with a strong community and user base. It is used in production for scenarios ranging from small websites with only a handful of users, up to large enterprises with millions of users.

This book introduces you to Keycloak, covering how to install Keycloak as well as how to configure it ready for production use cases. Furthermore, this book covers how to secure your own applications, as well as providing a good foundation for understanding OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.

In this edition, there are updated chapters based on the latest release of Keycloak. If you are familiar with the content from the previous edition, this edition will give you relevant updates throughout to bring you up to speed with the latest release. For the newcomers, this edition will serve as an excellent first step towards understanding Keycloak and how it can help you to enable a rich IAM solution within your organization.