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How to add enterprise SSO to an Express.js API

Blog post from WorkOS

Post Details
Company
Date Published
Author
Maria Paktiti
Word Count
3,460
Company Posts That Month
60
Language
English
Hacker News Points
-
Post removed?
No
Summary

Enterprise SSO is often required for selling to larger customers, but supporting many customer-managed SAML and OIDC identity providers can create complexity around certificates, metadata, provider differences, and IT-admin onboarding. The tutorial explains how WorkOS can abstract those details for an Express.js application through an OAuth-style authorization redirect, callback that exchanges a code for a user session, and middleware that protects API routes using sealed cookie sessions or locally verified JWT bearer tokens. It presents both an automated CLI installation path and a manual setup involving environment variables, redirect configuration, login and callback endpoints, encrypted refresh-token storage, logout with CSRF protection, and authorization based on signed organization, role, and permission claims. It also covers testing with a staging identity provider, delegating customer connection setup through an Admin Portal, troubleshooting connections, pricing distinctions between AuthKit and standalone SSO, common security pitfalls such as relying on email domains or using long-lived tokens, and extensions including SCIM provisioning, RBAC, audit logs, MFA, and fraud protection.

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