Apache Syncope 1.2 tutorial - part III

This is the third in a series of articles on the new features of Apache Syncope 1.2. The first article covered installing Syncope using the new UI installer. The second article demonstrated some new features of Apache Syncope 1.2 when working with backend resources, namely the ability to synchronize and propagate encrypted passwords. This post focuses on some new features associated with schemas in Syncope 1.2.

Apache Syncope uses the concept of a schema to define attributes for User, Roles and Memberships (the relationship of a User with a Role). You can define the attribute name, the type, whether it is multi-valued, whether it is unique or read-only, whether it is stored internally or remotely, etc. There are three new interesting features in Syncope 1.2 in the area of Schemas:

• Configuration Schema: The Configuration parameters are now covered by the Schema. You can add new attributes for the Configuration section in the Schema section.
• Encrypted Schema attributes: A new "Encrypted" attribute type is available. This will ensure that Syncope always keeps the attribute value encrypted with the specified key.
• Binary Schema attributes: A new "Binary" attribute type is available.

We will now focus on this latter feature. We will show how to use binary attributes with two examples. Start Apache Syncope + set up the LDAP Connector + Resource as covered in the first two tutorials.

1) Import X.509 Certificates into Syncope

The first use-case for binary schema attributes is to allow the synchronization of X.509 Certificates into Syncope from a backend resource. Go to the "Schema" tab, and create a new "User" attribute called "certificate" of type "Binary", and with mime type "application/x-x509-user-cert":

Next, go into the LDAP Resource configuration and add a new user mapping from the "certificate" attribute of the "UserSchema" to the LDAP "userCertificate" attribute. Now make sure that you have a user in your LDAP backend with a "userCertificate" attribute defined as follows:

Finally, run the synchronization task in Syncope. The user now has the certificate added as an attribute, which can be downloaded or else retrieved via the REST API:

2) Import images into Syncope

Another common use-case for binary attributes is to import images into Syncope. Create a new binary User attribute in the Schema called "image" of type "image/jpeg", and a new User mapping for the LDAP Connector mapping it to the LDAP "jpegPhoto" attribute. Assuming that a user in the LDAP backend has such an attribute defined, the newly synchronized User will look like this: