Java / Gradle

Secure a Micronaut application with GitHub

Learn how to create a Micronaut application and secure it with an Authorization Server provided by GitHub. Learn how to write your own Authentication Mapper.

Sergio del Amo
On this guide
In this section

Getting Started

In this guide, we will create a Micronaut application written in Java.

What you will need

To complete this guide, you will need the following:

Solution

We recommend that you follow the instructions in the next sections and create the application step by step. However, you can go right to the completed example.

Writing the Application

Create an application using the Micronaut Command Line Interface or with Micronaut Launch.

mn create-app example.micronaut.micronautguide \
    --features=views-thymeleaf,security-oauth2,security-jwt,reactor,serialization-jackson,http-client,graalvm \
    --build=gradle \
    --lang=java \
    --test=junit
Note
If you don’t specify the --build argument, Gradle with the Kotlin DSL is used as the build tool.
If you don’t specify the --lang argument, Java is used as the language.
If you don’t specify the --test argument, JUnit is used for Java and Kotlin, and Spock is used for Groovy.

The previous command creates a Micronaut application with the default package example.micronaut in a directory named micronautguide.

If you use Micronaut Launch, select Micronaut Application as application type and add views-thymeleaf, security-oauth2, security-jwt, reactor, serialization-jackson, http-client, and graalvm features.

Note
If you have an existing Micronaut application and want to add the functionality described here, you can view the dependency and configuration changes from the specified features, and apply those changes to your application.

Views

Although the Micronaut framework is primarily designed around message encoding / decoding, there are occasions where it is convenient to render a view on the server side.

We’ll use the Thymeleaf Java template engine to render views.

Home

Create a controller to handle the requests to /. You will display the email of the authenticated person if any. Annotate the controller endpoint with @View since we will use a Thymeleaf template.

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/HomeController.java

Create a Thymeleaf template:

src/main/resources/views/home.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Micronaut - GitHub example</h1>

<h2 th:if="${security}">username: <span th:text="${security.name}"> </h2>
<h2 th:unless="${security}">username: Anonymous</h2>

<nav>
    <ul>
        <li th:unless="${security}"><a href="/oauth/login/github">Enter</a></li>
        <li th:if="${security}"><a href="/repos">View Repos</a></li>
        <li th:if="${security}"><a href="/logout">Logout</a></li>
    </ul>
</nav>
</body>
</html>

Also, note that we return an empty model in the controller. However, we are accessing security in the Thymeleaf template.

GitHub OAuth App

To provide authentication, create a GitHub OAuth App.

github 1
github 2
github 3

OAuth 2.0 Configuration

Add the following OAuth 2.0 configuration:

src/main/resources/application.properties

The previous configuration uses several placeholders. You will need to set up the OAUTH_CLIENT_ID and OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET environment variables.

export OAUTH_CLIENT_ID=XXXXXXXXXX
export OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET=YYYYYYYYYY

User Details Mapper

Here is a high level diagram of how the authorization code grant flow works with an OAuth 2.0 provider such as GitHub.

standard oauth

We need an HTTP Client to retrieve the user info. Create a POJO to represent a GitHub user:

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/GithubUser.java
package example.micronaut;

import io.micronaut.serde.annotation.Serdeable;

@Serdeable
public class GithubUser {

    private final String login;
    private final String name;
    private final String email;

    public GithubUser(String login, String name, String email) {
        this.login = login;
        this.name = name;
        this.email = email;
    }

    public String getLogin() {
        return login;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public String getEmail() {
        return email;
    }
}

Then, create a Micronaut Declarative HTTP Client to consume GitHub REST API v3

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/GithubApiClient.java

Specify the URL for the githubv3 service.

src/main/resources/application.properties
micronaut.http.services.githubv3.url=https://api.github.com

For GitHub, we need to provide an authentication mapper. The easiest way is to create a bean that implements OauthAuthenticationMapper.

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/GithubAuthenticationMapper.java

Retrieve User GitHub repositories

With the access token retrieved during login, we will contact the GitHub API to fetch the user’s repositories.

First, create a POJO to represent a GitHub repository:

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/GithubRepo.java
package example.micronaut;

import io.micronaut.serde.annotation.Serdeable;

@Serdeable
public class GithubRepo {

    private final String name;

    public GithubRepo(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
}

Add a method to GithubApiClient

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/GithubApiClient.java

Create a controller to expose /repos endpoint:

java/src/main/java/example/micronaut/ReposController.java

Create a Thymeleaf template:

src/main/resources/views/repos.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns:th="http://www.thymeleaf.org">
<head>
    <title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="/">Home</a> &rarr; Repositories</h1>
<nav>
    <ul th:each="repo: ${repos}">
        <li th:text="${repo.name}"/>
    </ul>
</nav>
</body>
</html>

Running the Application

To run the application, use the ./gradlew run command, which starts the application on port 8080.

video

Generate a Micronaut Application Native Executable with GraalVM

We will use GraalVM, an advanced JDK with ahead-of-time Native Image compilation, to generate a native executable of this Micronaut application.

Compiling Micronaut applications ahead of time with GraalVM significantly improves startup time and reduces the memory footprint of JVM-based applications.

Note
Only Java and Kotlin projects support using GraalVM’s native-image tool. Groovy relies heavily on reflection, which is only partially supported by GraalVM.

GraalVM Installation

The easiest way to install GraalVM on Linux or Mac is to use SDKMan.io.

Java 25
sdk install java 25.0.2-graal

For installation on Windows, or for a manual installation on Linux or Mac, see the GraalVM Getting Started documentation.

The previous command installs Oracle GraalVM, which is free to use in production and free to redistribute, at no cost, under the GraalVM Free Terms and Conditions.

Alternatively, you can use the GraalVM Community Edition:

Java 25
sdk install java 25.0.2-graalce

Native Executable Generation

To generate a native executable using Gradle, run:

./gradlew nativeCompile

The native executable is created in build/native/nativeCompile directory and can be run with build/native/nativeCompile/micronautguide.

It is possible to customize the name of the native executable or pass additional parameters to GraalVM:

build.gradle

Visit localhost:8080 and authenticate with GitHub.

Next Steps

Read Micronaut OAuth 2.0 documentation to learn more.

Help with the Micronaut Framework

The Micronaut Foundation sponsored the creation of this Guide. A variety of consulting and support services are available.

License

Note
All guides are released with an Apache License 2.0 for the code and a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license for the writing and media (images).