F5’s BIG-IP Access Policy Manager (APM) or Access Manager is a flexible, high-performance, centralized access management and security solution that delivers contextual, unified global access to your applications and network as well as to the Internet.
This Knowledge Base article provides step-by-step instructions for using Appdome to add F5 APM SSO to mobile apps, both Android and iOS.
We hope you find this knowledge base useful and enjoy using Appdome!
Appdome is a mobile integration platform as a service (iPaaS) that allows users to add a wide variety of features, SDKs, and APIs to Android and iOS apps. Using a simple ‘click to add’ user interface, Appdome allows anyone to easily integrate F5 APM SSO to mobile apps – instantly, no code or coding required.
Using Appdome, there are no development or coding prerequisites. For example, there is no Appdome SDK, libraries, or plug-ins to implement. Likewise, there are no required infrastructure changes and no dependency on SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect or any other authentication standard inside the app. The Appdome technology adds F5 APM SSO and relevant standards, frameworks and more to the app automatically, with no manual development work at all.
Using Appdome, mobile apps will use F5 APM SSO to authenticate users as if F5 APM SSO was natively coded to the app. Appdome for F5 APM SSO is compatible with mobile apps built in any development environment including Native Android and iOS apps, hybrid apps and non-native apps built-in Xamarin, Cordova, and React Native, Ionic and more. This streamlines implementations, cuts development work, and ensures a guaranteed and consistent integration of F5 APM SSO to mobile apps.
The following diagram illustrates the Single-Sign-On flow within the app when integrating F5 APM as a cloud provider:
In order to use Appdome’s no code implementation of F5 Access Policy Manager SSO on Appdome, you’ll need:
If you these components are not configured on your F5 instance, see How to Configure an Oauth 2 Server in F5 BIG-IP.
Follow these step-by-step instructions to add F5 APM SSO to Any Mobile App:
Please follow these steps to add a mobile app to your Appdome account.
If you don’t have an Appdome account, click here to create an account.
The technology behind Build My App has two major elements – (1) a microservice architecture filled with 1000s of code sets needed for mobile integrations, and (2) an adaptive code generation engine that can recognize the development environment, frameworks and methods in each app and match the app to the relevant code-sets needed to add F5 APM SSO to the mobile app in seconds. For example, the technology of Open-ID Connect and Webview authentication, work that ordinarily a developer would need to do.
Congratulations! You now have a mobile app fully integrated with F5 APM SSO.
Building Single Sign-On inside Android and iOS apps involves several significant considerations. Perhaps the most significant consideration is “where” and “when” the Single Sign-On workflow will take place inside the app. Usually, an SSO workflow is initiated at the start of a login sequence. In this use case, the client and the server are built to handle the basic authentication sequence (User –> launches app –> enters credentials –> credentials verified by the server –> user issued a token or cookie allowing access to the app).
But, what if the app developer hasn’t or doesn’t want to build the app to support basic authentication? Or, what if the app developer wants more than the username and password provided in the basic authentication workflow (e.g., access to user details available in new authentication methods)? In these cases, Appdome-Threat Events provide a framework to pass user details contained in an OpenID and SAML authentication response to the app developer. This framework allows new flexibility to create custom SSO workflows inside an app using industry-standard methods to retrieve and pass user details between authentication services and mobile apps.
F5 APM authentication services usually connect on the backend to a store of user data and use SAML or OpenID to handle authentication requests. Using SAML and OpenID, applications have access to all the user and authentication details returned by the server backend (i.e. any data the backend implements).
Read this KB article to learn more.
After you have added F5 APM SSO to any Mobile App on Appdome, there are a few additional steps needed to complete your mobile integration project.
Appdome is a full-featured mobile integration platform. Within Context™, Appdome users can brand the app, including adding a favicon to denote the new service added to the app.
For more information on the range of options available in Context™, please read this knowledge base article.
In order to deploy an Appdome Built app, it must be signed. Signing an iOS app and Signing an Android app is easy using Appdome. Alternatively, you can use Private Signing, download your unsigned app and sign locally using your own signing methods.
Once you have signed your Appdome Built app, you can download to deploy it using your distribution method of choice. For more information on deploying your Appdome Built apps, please read this knowledge base.
That is it – Enjoy Appdome for F5 Access Policy Manager SSO in your app!
Check out Appdome for SSO+ blog or request a demo at any time.
If you have any questions around adding F5 APM SSO to mobile apps, please send them our way at support@appdome.com or via the chat window on the Appdome platform.
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