Debugging Browser Based Authentication Workflows

  2019-02-28


Sometimes things break; sometimes I try to fix them. “Try” being the operative word here. Spent most of the evening trying to figure out why the workflow was usable in Microsoft Edge or IE, but doesn’t work in Chrome. The joys of huge enterprise web apps.

Some limited discoveries that I made this evening:

  • Chrome/Vivaldi does have a setting to open up the Dev Tools with a new popup window - useful when your site spawns a new window
  • trying to debug SAML workflows is a pain
  • I am pretty behind when it comes to complicated front end development

After a good couple of hours of reaquainting myself with the dev tools from a few different browsers, I think I’ve discovered that MS browsers pass on a session cookie to an http site (from https) while chromium browsers do not. Without the session cookie, there’s no access.

So the obvious question: how do I fix that?