Send Message

SAML messages are transmitted using one of the bindings SAML defines. Light Saml implements HTTP-Redirect and HTTP-POST bindings. Specific binding defines how serialized SAML message XML will be encoded and transferred. Both bindings base64 encode the SAML XML. HTTP-Redirect binding uses the HTTP GET method and puts base64 encoded SAML message XML in the query parameter. The HTTP-POST binding sends a message trough a HTML form with POST method.

Light Saml implements an AbstractBinding class that encapsulates all bindings behavior - sending and receiving messages. You should use BindingFactory to obtain specific binding instance, passing the binding type constant to it's create() method.

Binding instance requires a MessageContext instance as an argument, and that MessageContext should have the message property set before calling the send() method. Both HTTP-POST and HTTP-Redirect bindings send() methods return an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response.

Redirect binding

Redirect binding send() method returns an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RedirectResponse and it's targetUrl property is the location user should be redirected to.

<?php
$authnRequest = new \LightSaml\Model\Protocol\AuthnRequest();
$authnRequest->setDestination('http://destination.com');

$bindingFactory = new \LightSaml\Binding\BindingFactory();
$redirectBinding = $bindingFactory->create(\LightSaml\SamlConstants::BINDING_SAML2_HTTP_REDIRECT);

$messageContext = new \LightSaml\Context\Profile\MessageContext();
$messageContext->setMessage($authnRequest);

/** @var \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\RedirectResponse $httpResponse */
$httpResponse = $redirectBinding->send($messageContext);
print $httpResponse->getTargetUrl();

The target redirect url for the example above would be similar to:

http://destination.com?SAMLRequest=BASE64.ENCODED.MESSAGE%3D%3D

Post binding

The Post binding send() method returns an instance of Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response with it's content being and HTML form that will automatically POST submit to the destination with encoded SAML message.

<?php
$authnRequest = new \LightSaml\Model\Protocol\AuthnRequest();
$authnRequest->setDestination('http://destination.com');

$bindingFactory = new \LightSaml\Binding\BindingFactory();
$postBinding = $bindingFactory->create(\LightSaml\SamlConstants::BINDING_SAML2_HTTP_POST);

$messageContext = new \LightSaml\Context\Profile\MessageContext();
$messageContext->setMessage($authnRequest);

/** @var \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response $httpResponse */
$httpResponse = $postBinding->send($messageContext);
print $httpResponse->getContent();

Generated HTML for the example above would look similar to

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <title>POST data</title>
</head>
<body onload="document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0].click();">

    <noscript>
        <p><strong>Note:</strong> Since your browser does not support JavaScript, you must
            press the button below once to proceed.</p>
    </noscript>

    <form method="post" action="http://destination.com">
        <input type="submit" style="display:none;" />

        <input type="hidden" name="SAMLRequest" value="BASE64.ENCODED.MESSAGE=" />

        <noscript>
            <input type="submit" value="Submit" />
        </noscript>

    </form>
</body>
</html>

Redirect binding​

Post binding​

Redirect binding

Post binding