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REST API Authentication On Atlassian using AWS Cognito as OAuth Provider

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Using this app, you can authenticate the Application APIs using any third party OAuth/OIDC provider or API Tokens. The app supports Azure AD, Keycloak, Okta, AWS Cognito, Google, Github, Slack, Gitlab, Facebook and any custom provider.

Atlassian provides REST APIs to perform a number of operations such as Create Page, Delete Page, Add Comment, Create Space, etc. However, it supports only two authentication methods for REST APIs:
  1. Basic Authentication
  2. Using OAuth 1.0
The REST API Authentication plugin allows you to use any third party OAuth 2.0 provider/ OpenID connect to authenticate REST APIs. Here we will go through a guide to configure Azure AD as Provider.

Download And Installation

  • Log into your atlassian instance as admin.
  • Navigate to the settings menu and Click Manage Apps.
  • Click Find new apps or Find new add-ons from the left-hand side of the page.
  • Locate API Token/OAuth Authentication app.
  • Click Try free to begin a new trial or Buy now to purchase a license.
  • Enter your information and click Generate license when redirected to MyAtlassian.
  • Click Apply license.

Step 1: Configure AWS Cognito server:

  • Sign in to AWS Amaazon. Now enter Cognito in search texbox and select Cognito from dropbox
    • AWS-Cognito as OpenID
  • In the left-hand navigation pane, click the App registrations service, and click New registration.
    • AWS-Cognito as OpenID
  • Go to Manage your user pools and click on Create a user pool
  • Add pool name and select Review Defaults.
  • Click on Add app client & then click on Add an app client.
  • Enter App client name & then Click on . Create app client.
    • AWS-Cognito as OpenID
  • Go to App client” and click on “Show details to get a client ID and client secret.
  • Go to domain name and enter a domain name for your app. After adding domain name you can check its availability by clicking on Check availability button. After entering valid domain name click Save changes button.
    • AWS-Cognito as OpenID

Step 2: Fetch Access token through POSTMAN:

  • Open the Postman Application (Here is the link to download Postman Application).
  • Go to Authorization tab.
  • From the dropdown select type as OAuth 2.0 and  click on Get access token.
  • Add the following information from the table below.
  • Postman starts the authentication flow and prompts you to use the access token.
  • Select Add token to the header.
Field Value
Grant type Authorization Code or Client Credentials
Callback URL Enter your application's base URL if you dont have a callback URL
Auth URL https://{DomainName}/oauth2/authorize
Access token URL https://{DomainName}/oauth2/token
Client ID Enter the AWS Cognito Client ID
Client secret Enter the AWS Cognito Client secret
Scope Identify
Client Authentication Send as Basic Auth Header
  • Copy the Access Token or click on Use Token.
A sample access token from AWS Cognito Provider looks like this. 
e8ec210628306b1df26ff61e6b9b3195814a2d79d38a2c7c1dc5836f6ddd7143

Step 3: Fetch Username through AWS Cognito:

  • Choose the method type as "GET".
  • Enter the interoception Endpoint from the plugin to fetch the username in the Request URL. For AWS Cognito it is "".
  • Go to the Authorization tab select the Bearer Token and enter the access token here.
  • Add the header "content-type: application/json" and click on Send.
AWS-Cognito as OpenID
Request: 
     curl
                         -X GET
                         -H "Authorization: Bearer <Access Token>"
                         -H "Content-type: application/json" 
     https://discordapp.com/api/users/@me
Copy the attribute value against the username, you will need to configure it in plugin. In this example, the value is "username".

Step 4: Configure the Rest API plugin:

Step 1: Enable Rest API Authentication:
  • After installing the app, navigate to the app configurationsthrough the Manage Apps dropdown.
  • Here you will have to Enable Authentication through REST API Authentication.
  • In the dropdown provided select AWS Cognito as the OAuth provider.
  • Enter the attribute value against which we received the username in the Postman response.
  • Save the settings.
Step 2: Disable Basic Authentication:
  • Disabling this will restrict all the REST API call made using Basic Authentication.

Step 5: Test REST API using access token:

  • Call any REST API of your Atlassian application. Include the access token in the Authorization header. Here’s an example of fetching content from Confluence.
  • Go to the Postman application select method type as GET and enter the Request URL. For eg. http://{Confluence_Base_URL}/confluence/rest/api/content/
  • In the Authorization tab select type as Bearer Token.
AWS-Cognito as OpenID-AccessToken  
  • In the Header tab add the header “content-type: application/json and send the request.
AWS-Cognito as OpenID
Request: 
     curl
                             -X GET
                             -H "Authorization: Bearer <Access Token>"
                             -H "Content-type: application/json"
                             http://{confluence_base_url}/confluence/rest/api/content/
  • This will show the content in Confluence and will return the status 200.
  • If the token is invalid or missing, the call will return a 401 Unauthorized response.



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