Authenticating users with SAML

Hue supports SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) for Single Sign-on (SSO) authentication.

The SAML 2.0 Web Browser SSO profile has three components:

User Agent - Browser that represents you, the user, seeking resources.
Service Provider (SP) - Service (Hue) that sends authentication requests to SAML.
Identity Provider (IdP) - SAML service that authenticates users.

When a user requests access to an application, the Service Provider (Hue) sends an authentication request from the User Agent (browser) to the identity provider. The identity provider authenticates the user, sends a response, and redirects the browser back to Hue as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 1. SAML SSO protocol flow in a web browser

The Service Provider (Hue) and the identity provider use a metadata file to confirm each other's identity. Hue stores metadata from the SAML server, and the identity provider stores metadata from the Hue server.