Firebase Authentication SAML resource metadata file

Question

We are using Firebase Authentication. A customer wants SSO access over SAML to our application. They use Open Athens as their identity provider. Now I've setup their SAML provider and sent them the Callback URL. However, they asked for a

SAML resource metadata file

which is a XML file where I have no idea on how to obtain in Firebase. Is this available in Firebase?

Answer 1

SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) is a markup language that is spoken between two entities, the IDP (IDentity Provider) and the SP (Service Provider).

In order to make both the IDP and the SP able to communicate each-other is to make sure they talk SAML. A metadata file is used in order to specify everything that needs specification in the context of this communication, like certs and SAML authorities. If you have a SAML plugin/library/something, then you should also have a metadata somewhere or the ability to generate one.

Here's an article where you can read more: https://medium.com/@tfalvo/single-sign-on-sso-for-your-firebase-app-with-saml-f67c71e0b4d6

And here's another one: https://www.miniorange.com/single-sign-on-(sso)-for-firebase-application

Answer 2

Apparently, you cannot obtain the metadata file from Firebase, but you can create the XML file manually, based on the information you get from Firebase.

Here's an online generator to generate the XML metadata for a SAML Service Provider: https://www.samltool.com/sp_metadata.php

If you need the XML metadata for a SAML Identity Provider, you can use this one: https://www.samltool.com/idp_metadata.php