Windows AD

Pode's inbuilt Windows AD authentication works cross-platform, using OpenLDAP to work in *nix environments.

This authenticator can only be used with the Basic and Form schemes. Custom is also supported, but a username and password must be supplied.

Usage

To enable Windows AD authentication you can use the Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd function. The following example will validate a user's credentials, supplied via a web-form, against the default AD the current server is joined to:

Start-PodeServer {
    Enable-PodeSessionMiddleware -Duration 120 -Extend
    New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login'
}

Tip

The authenticating user's credentials are disposed of after authentication. If you need to use the credentials for later use in routes from $WebEvent.Auth.User, pass the -KeepCredential switch on Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd.

User Object

The User object returned, and accessible on Routes, and other functions via $WebEvent.Auth.User, will contain the following information:

Name	Type	Description
UserType	string	Value is fixed to Domain
AuthenticationType	string	Value is fixed to LDAP
DistinguishedName	string	The distinguished name of the user
Username	string	The user's username (without domain)
Name	string	The user's fullname
Email	string	The user's email address
FQDN	string	The FQDN of the AD server
Domain	string	The domain part of the user's username
Groups	string[]	All groups, and nested groups, of which the the user is a member
Credential	pscredential	The credentials of the authenticating user, if -KeepCredential was supplied

Such as:

Add-PodeRoute -Method Get -Path '/info' -Authentication 'Login' -ScriptBlock {
    Write-Host $WebEvent.Auth.User.Username
}

Providers

The default Provider which Pode uses for Windows AD is Directory Services on Windows, or OpenLDAP on *nix environments. However, you can force OpenLDAP or Windows, or you can specify to use the ActiveDirectory module on Windows using the -OpenLDAP or -ADModule switches:

# force OpenLDAP
New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -OpenLDAP

# force ActiveDirectory
New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -ADModule

When you use -ADModule switch, Pode will automatically import the module for you.

Groups

By default Pode will retrieve all groups that a user is a member of, recursively. This can at times cause performance issues if you have a lot of groups in your domain.

If you need groups, but you only need the direct groups a user is a member of then you can specify -DirectGroups. Or, if you don't need the groups at all, you can specify -NoGroups:

# direct groups only
New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -DirectGroups

# no groups
New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -NoGroups

Server

If you want to supply a custom DNS domain, then you can supply the -Fqdn parameter:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -Fqdn 'test.example.com'

Domain

For OpenLDAP Pode will automatically retrieve the NetBIOS to be prepended on the username, ie: <domain>\<username>. This is automatically generate by used the first part of the DNS server's FQDN, for example if your server's FQDN was test.example.com then Pode would set the NetBIOS as test.

You can use a custom domain NetBIOS by suppliying the -Domain parameter:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -Fqdn 'test.example.com' -Domain 'testdomain'

SearchBase

When authenticating users via OpenLDAP, the default base distinguished name searched from will be the server root, ie: DC=test,DC=example,DC=com. You can refine this by supplying an optional -SearchBase, that should be the full distinguished name:

For example, the below will search in OU=CustomUsers,DC=test,DC=example,DC=com:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -SearchBase 'OU=CustomUsers,DC=test,DC=example,DC=com'

Allow

You can supply an optional array of either User/Group names, or both; and if the user being authenticated is in the list (or on of their groups are) they will be allowed.

Groups

You can supply a list of group names to validate that users are a member of them in AD. If you supply multiple group names, the user only needs to be a member of one of the groups. You can supply the list of groups to the function's -Groups parameter as an array - the list is not case-sensitive:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -Groups @('admins', 'devops')

If an user being authenticated is not in one of these groups, then a 401 is returned.

Users

You can supply a list of authorised usernames to validate a user's access, after credentials are validated, and instead of of checking AD groups. You can supply the list of usernames to the function's -Users parameter as an array - the list is not case-sensitive:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -Users @('jsnow', 'rsanchez')

If an user being authenticated is not one of the allowed users, then a 401 is returned.

Additional Validation

Similar to the normal Add-PodeAuth, Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd can be supplied can an optional ScriptBlock parameter. This ScriptBlock is supplied the found User object as a parameter, structured as details above. You can then use this to further check the user, or load additional user information from another storage.

The ScriptBlock has the same return rules as Add-PodeAuth, as can be seen in the Overview.

For example, to return the user back:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -ScriptBlock {
    param($user)

    # check or load extra data

    return @{ User = $user }
}

Or to fail authentication with an error message:

New-PodeAuthScheme -Form | Add-PodeAuthWindowsAd -Name 'Login' -ScriptBlock {
    param($user)
    return @{ Message = 'Authorisation failed' }
}