OmniAuth Blackboard

Gem to authenticate with Blackboard via OAuth2

Background

OmniAuth Blackboard grew out of the need to simplify the process of setting up LTI and connecting a user account on to Blackboard on various projects built by Atomic Jolt.

Example

Atomic Jolt has created an LTI started application that demonstrates how to use the OAuth gem: LTI Starter App

Setup

By default omniauth-blackboard will attempt to authenticate with https://bd-partner-a-original.blackboard.com.

NOTE: you will need to set env['rack.session']['oauth_site'] to the current Blackboard instance that you wish to OAuth with. By default this is https://bd-partner-a-original.blackboard.com

-- OR --

to dynamically set the blackboard site url do one of the following.

Standard setup

use OmniAuth::Builder do
  provider :blackboard, 'blackboard_key', 'blackboard_secret', :setup => lambda{|env|
    request = Rack::Request.new(env)
    env['omniauth.strategy'].options[:client_options].site = env['rack.session']['oauth_site']
  }
end

Setup with Devise

config.omniauth :blackboard, 'blackboard_key', 'blackboard_secret', :setup => lambda{|env|
  request = Rack::Request.new(env)
  env['omniauth.strategy'].options[:client_options].site = env['rack.session']['oauth_site']
}

Alternative Setup

In this setup, you do not have to set env['rack.session']['oauth_site']

Rails.application.config.middleware.use OmniAuth::Builder do
  provider :blackboard, APP_CONFIG['blackboard_client_id'], APP_CONFIG['blackboard_client_secret'],
  {
    :client_options => {
      :site => APP_CONFIG['blackboard_host']
    }
  }
end

Blackboard Configuration

If you are running your own installation of blackboard, you can generate a client ID and secret in the Site Admin account of your Blackboard install. There will be a "Developer Keys" tab on the left navigation sidebar. For more information, consult the Blackboard OAuth Documentation

State

In most cases your application will need to restore state after handling the OAuth process with Blackboard. Since many applications that integrate with Blackboard will be launched via the LTI protocol inside of an iframe sessions may not be available. To restore application state the omniauth-blackboard gem uses the "state" parameter provided by the LTI proctocol. You will need to add the following code to your application to take advantage of this functionality:

Add the following initializer in config/initializers/omniauth.rb:

OmniAuth.config.before_request_phase do |env|
  request = Rack::Request.new(env)
  state = "#{SecureRandom.hex(24)}#{DateTime.now.to_i}"
  OauthState.create!(state: state, payload: request.params.to_json)
  env["omniauth.strategy"].options[:authorize_params].state = state

  # Bye default omniauth will store all params in the session. The code above
  # stores the values in the database so we remove the values from the session
  # since the amount of data in the original params object will overflow the
  # allowed cookie size
  env["rack.session"].delete("omniauth.params")
end

Add the following middleware to lib/middlware/oauth_state_middleware.rb:

class OauthStateMiddleware
  def initialize(app)
    @app = app
  end

  def call(env)
    request = Rack::Request.new(env)
    if request.params["state"] && request.params["code"]
      if oauth_state = OauthState.find_by(state: request.params["state"])
        # Restore the param from before the OAuth dance
        state_params = JSON.parse(oauth_state.payload) || {}
        state_params.each do |key, value|
          request.update_param(key, value)
        end
        application_instance = ApplicationInstance.find_by(lti_key: state_params["oauth_consumer_key"])
        env["blackboard.url"] = application_instance.lti_consumer_uri
        oauth_state.destroy
      else
        raise OauthStateMiddlewareException, "Invalid state in OAuth callback"
      end
    end
    @app.call(env)
  end
end

class OauthStateMiddlewareException < RuntimeError
end

This middleware relies upon two models - OauthState and ApplicationInstance. OauthState is used to store relevant state before sending the user to Blackboard to finish the OAuth. ApplicationInstance is model used in Atomic Jolt projects that is used to store the Blackboard Url so that it can be reset in the environment. You don't need to implement the same model, but you will need to store the user's Blackboard URL somewhere before sending the user to OAuth with Blackboard. Change the following lines in the above code to recover the Blackboard URL from where ever it is stored:

application_instance = ApplicationInstance.find_by(lti_key: state_params["oauth_consumer_key"])
env["blackboard.url"] = application_instance.lti_consumer_uri

The OauthState model looks like this:

class OauthState < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :state, presence: true, uniqueness: true
end

With the following schema:

create_table "oauth_states", force: :cascade do |t|
  t.string   "state"
  t.text     "payload"
  t.datetime "created_at", null: false
  t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
  t.index ["state"], name: "index_oauth_states_on_state", using: :btree
end

Last, enable the middleware by adding the following to config/application.rb:

# Middleware that can restore state after an OAuth request
config.middleware.insert_before 0, "OauthStateMiddleware"

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.