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SAML Single Sign-On into Joomla using SimpleSAML

miniOrange Joomla SAML SP SSO plugin helps you to integrate your Joomla site to SimpleSAML using SAML 2.0 protocol. Our user-friendly plugin simplifies the process of setting up Single Sign-on (SSO) with SimpleSAML in Joomla, ensuring a secure login experience. This enables users to access various Joomla sites effortlessly using their SimpleSAML IDP credentials.

Our plugin is designed to be compatible with Joomla 3, 4 as well as 5 and works seamlessly with all SAML 2.0 compliant Identity Providers. For a detailed overview of the comprehensive features offered by the Joomla SAML SP plugin, please visit our page here. Below, we provide a step-by-step guide on configuring SAML SSO login between your Joomla site and SimpleSAML, with SimpleSAML serving as the Identity Provider (IDP) and Joomla as the Service Provider (SP).

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In this setup, SimpleSAML serves as the repository for storing users i.e. it will act as the IDP while Joomla is where users will log in using their credentials from SimpleSAML where Joomla SAML SP SSO Plugin will be installed.

  • Login into your Joomla site’s Administrator console.
  • From left toggle menu, click on System, then under Install section click on Extensions.
  • Now click on Or Browse for file button to locate and install the plugin file downloaded earlier.
Install Joomla SAML SP Plugin
  • Installation of plugin is successful. Now click on Get Started!
Get Started with SAML SP Setup
  • Go to the Service Provider Metadata tab, here you can find the Metadata URL, download the metadata XML file, or you can copy the Entity ID and ACS URL directly.
Get Started with SAML SP Setup

Enabling the Identity Provider functionality:

  • The first that must be done is to enable the identity provider functionality. This is done by editing config/config.php (You can find this file in your simplesaml installation directory). The option enable.saml20-idp controls whether SAML 2.0 IdP support is enabled. Enable it by assigning true to them.
  • Example: ‘enable.saml20-idp’ => true.

Configuring the authentication module:

  • The exampleauth: UserPass authentication module is part of the exampleauth module. This module isn't enabled by default, so you will have to enable it. This is done by creating a file named enable (file name) in modules/ exampleauth/.
  • On unix, this can be done by running (from the SimpleSAMLphp installation directory).
  • The next step is to create an authentication source with this module. An authentication source is an authentication module with a specific configuration. Each authentication source has a name, which is used to refer to this specific configuration in the IdP configuration. Configuration for authentication sources can be found in config/ authsources.php.
  • In this setup, this file should contain a single entry:
    • <?php     $config = [     'example-userpass' => [     'exampleauth: UserPass',     'student: studentpass' => [     'uid' =>
  • This configuration creates two users - student and employee, with the passwords studentpass and employeepass. The username and password are stored in the array index (student: studentpass for the student-user). The attributes for each user are configured in the array referenced by the index. So for the student user, these are:
    • [ 'uid' => ['student'], 'eduPersonAffiliation' => ['member', 'student'], ],
  • The attributes will be returned by the IdP when the user logs on.

Creating a self-signed certificate:

  • The IdP needs a certificate to sign its SAML assertions with. Here is an example of an openssl-command which can be used to generate a new private key key and the corresponding self-signed certificate. The private key and certificate go into the directory defined in the certdir setting (defaults to cert/) This key and certificate can be used to sign SAML messages:
    • openssl req -newkey rsa:3072 -new -x509 -days 3652 -nodes -out example.org.crt -keyout example.org.pem
  • The certificate above will be valid for 10 years. OR You can generate it by using any online Tools and add them in cert directory. The extension should be like:
    • example.org.crt //(Public Key)    example.org.pem //(Private Key)
  • Note: SimpleSAMLphp will only work with RSA certificates. DSA certificates are not supported.

Configuring the IdP:

  • The SAML 2.0 IdP is configured by the metadata stored in metadata/saml20-idp-hosted.php. This is a minimal configuration:
    • <?php    $metadata['__DYNAMIC:1__'] = [    /*    * The hostname for this IdP. This makes it possible to run multiple    * IdPs fro

Adding SPs to the IdP:

  • The identity provider you are configuring needs to know about the service providers you are going to connect to it. This is configured by metadata stored in metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php. This is a minimal example of a metadata/saml20-sp-remote.php metadata file for a SimpleSAMLphp SP:
    Replace example.com with your Joomla domain name.
    • <?php        $metadata['https://example.com/plugins/authentication/miniorangesaml/'] = [         'Assertion Consumer Service' =>
  • Note that the URI in the entityID and the URLs to the Assertion Consumer Service and Single Logout Service endpoints change between different service providers. If you have the metadata of the remote SP as an XML file, you can use the built-in XML to SimpleSAMLphp metadata converter, which by default is available as /admin/metadata-converter.php in your SimpleSAMLphp installation.
    • Here, you can also add user attributes you want to send from SimpleSAML to your Service Provider i.e Joomla.
    • Go to SimpleSAMLphp homepage of installation. The URL of an installation can be e.g.:
      • https://service.example.com/simplesaml/ where service.example.com
    • Note: The installation page URL may differ depending on how SimpleSAML installation has been done.
    • Now go to Federation Tab and click on Show Metadata for SAML 2.0 IdP Metadata.
    Configure SimpleSAML as the IDP

    • You can get the IdP metadata from here which will be required to configure the plugin.

In Joomla SAML plugin, go to Service Provider Setup tab. There are three ways to configure the plugin:

A. By uploading IDP metadata:

  • In Joomla SAML plugin, go to Service Provider Setup tab, then click on Upload IdP Metadata.
Upload IdP Metadata

B. By Metadata URL:

  • Enter Metadata URL (Copy from IDP app) and click on Fetch button.
Upload IdP Metadata

C. Manual Configuration:

  • Copy SAML Entity ID, SAML Single-Sign-On Endpoint URL and X.509 certificate from Federation Metadata document and paste it in Idp Entity ID or Issuer, Single Sign-on URL, X.509 Certificate fields respectively in the plugin.
IdP Entity ID or Issuer SAML Entity ID in the Federation Metadata document
Single Sign-On URL SAML Single-Sign-On Endpoint URL in the Federation Metadata document
X.509 Certificate Value X.509 Certificate in the Federation Metadata document
Upload IdP Metadata
  • Attributes are user details that are stored in your Identity Provider.
  • Attribute Mapping helps you to get user attributes from your Identity Provider (IDP) and map them to Joomla user attributes like firstname, lastname, address, phone etc.
  • While auto registering the users in your Joomla site these attributes will automatically get mapped to your Joomla user details.
  • Go to Attribute Mapping tab and fill in all the fields.
Username: Name of the username attribute from IdP (Keep NameID by default)
Email: Name of the email attribute from IdP (Keep NameID by default)
Name: Name of the name attribute from IdP
Joomla Attribute Mapping
  • You can check the Test Configuration Results under Service Provider Setup tab to get a better idea of which values to map here.

Note: You can see how Attribute Mapping works here.

  • Group/Role mapping helps you to assign specific roles to users of a certain group in your Identity Provider (IdP).
  • While auto registering, the users are assigned roles based on the group they are mapped to.
Joomla Group Mapping
  • Group/Role mapping helps you to assign specific roles to users of a certain group in your Identity Provider (IdP).
  • While auto registering, the users are assigned roles based on the group they are mapped to.

Note: You can see how Group/Role Mapping works here.

  • Go to Login Settings tab. You can add login Url to Perform SAML SSO in your Joomla site by following the steps below.
  • There are multiple features available in this tab like Auto redirect the user to Identity Provider and Enable Backend Login for Super Users. To use these features, click on the respective checkboxes.
Joomla Group Mapping
  • Click on the Upgrade tab to check out our complete list of features and various licensing plans. OR you can click here to check features and licensing plans.
  • In case, you are facing some issue or have any question in mind, you can reach out to us by sending us your query through the Support button in the plugin or by sending us a mail at joomlasupport@xecurify.com.
More FAQs ➔

There are a couple of reasons why this can happen:

1. Caching is enabled on the website.
When auto-redirect is enabled, the user is redirected to the IDP login page and after logging in back to the main site but as caching is enabled it redirects to the IDP login page hence a loop.

2. HTTP/HTTPS discrepancy:
This happens when HTTPS is not enforced on the site but is configured on the IDP side with an HTTPS URL. This can be solved by enforcing HTTPS on the site by defining a redirect rule in the .htaccess file or at the Apache level.

3. Cookie adulteration:
The cookie created by the plugin after logging in the user is altered by another plugin which causes the user to not log in to the Joomla site but the session is created on IDP.

In Joomla SAML plugin, when an extension is not enabled after installing the plugin, after clicking on ‘Test Configuration’ it takes you to your own site instead of redirecting you to IDP. To resolve it, you need to enable all the extensions of the plugin after installing it.

Please follow the below steps to resolve this issue:

1. In the Joomla admin interface, go to Extensions -> Manage -> Manage.
2. Search for ‘miniorange’.
3. Enable all the extensions of the plugins.

Here are some frequent errors that can occur:

INVALID_ISSUER: This means that you have NOT entered the correct Issuer or Entity ID value provided by your Identity Provider. You’ll see in the error message what was the expected value (that you have configured) and what actually found in the SAML Response.
INVALID_AUDIENCE: This means that you have NOT configured Audience URL in your Identity Provider correctly. It must be set to https://base-url-of-your-joomla-site/plugins/authentication/miniorangesaml/ in your Identity Provider.
INVALID_DESTINATION: This means that you have NOT configured Destination URL in your Identity Provider correctly. It must be set to https://base-url-of-your-joomla-site/plugins/authentication/miniorangesaml/saml2/acs.php in your Identity Provider.
INVALID_SIGNATURE: This means that the certificate you provided did not match the certificate found in the SAML Response. Make sure you provide the same certificate that you downloaded from your IdP. If you have your IdP’s Metadata XML file then make sure you provide certificate enclosed in X509 Certificate tag which has an attribute use=’ signing’.
INVALID_CERTIFICATE: This means that the certificate you provided is not in a proper format. Make sure you have copied the entire certificate provided by your IdP. If copied from IdP’s Metadata XML file, make sure that you copied the entire value.

This is possible only when a certificate coming in SAML Response does not match with the certificate configured in the plugin. Copy the certificate value shown in the Test Configuration window and paste it in X.509 Certificate field in the Service Provider tab in the plugin.

Please follow the steps to the export configuration:
1) Go to the miniOrange SAML SP plugin and navigate to the Service Provider Setup tab.
2) Then click on the Import/Export button at the bottom of the page and then click on the Export Configuration button.
3) Navigate to System >> Manage and search miniOrange in the search bar. Then uninstall all miniOrange extensions.

Please follow the steps to import configuration:
1) Install the latest plugin and log in with your miniOrange credentials in the plugin.
2) Navigate to the Service Provider Setup tab and click on Import/Export button.
3) Upload the downloaded configuration file and then click on the Import Configuration button.

While updating Joomla SAML Plugin, if table or column is not added to the database then you will get a missing table error. This issue generally arises when a table or column is not added to the database while updating the plugin.
You can reinstall the plugin to resolve this issue, please follow the below steps:

Uninstall the existing plugin (Take the backup of the existing plugin before uninstalling the plugin)
– Go to Extensions -> Manage -> Manage
– Search for miniOrange
– Select all the extensions and click ‘Uninstall’.
Now install the plugin again and configure it.

A Joomla site can be either used as a Service Provider or an Identity Provider using the relevant SP or IDP plugin. You are facing this error probably because you have installed both the plugins on the same site.
In order to resolve this issue, please follow the below-mentioned steps: Delete the following folders from your Joomla directory:

1. /libraries/miniorangejoomlaidpplugin
2. /libraries/miniorangesamlplugin
3. /plugins/system/samlredirect
Now you should be able to log into your Joomla site.

Remove the remaining extensions:

1. In your Joomla site administrator console, go to Extensions -> Manage -> Manage.
2. Search for ‘miniorange’
3. Select all extensions and click Uninstall

The redirection issue occurs while using the Admin Tools plugin for Joomla SAML SSO, where the Admin Tools plugin makes changes in the .htaccess file and adds certain rules that prevent redirection from the site.

You can solve the above issue by following the steps given below:

1. Navigate to Admin tools >> Control Panel then click on the .htaccess maker option.
2. Then disable the option ‘Protect against common file injection attacks’.
Then clear the cache for your site and test for Single Sign-On.

SAML Tracer Logs:

1. Download SAML tracer add-on : Firefox: [ Link ] | Chrome:[ Link ] 2. Open the SAML tracer from the Browser toolbar.
3. Keep the SAML tracer window open.
4. Perform SSO/Test configuration and reproduce the issue.
5. Go to SAML tracer window.
6. You will get the option to Export SAML Tracer Log in a file (On top menu bar). Save the logs to a file, choose ‘None‘ when prompted and send us this file.

It seems that your Identity Provider is sending an error in the SAML Response. To troubleshoot this, please go to the Service Provider Setup tab of the SAML SP Plugin. Click on the Test Configuration and review the configuration result window. Ensure that the Attribute Mapping has been done correctly and verify that the X.509 Certificate Value is accurate.



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