GitHub Team Sync

This utility is intended to enable synchronization between GitHub and various LDAP and SAML providers. This is particularly useful for large organizations with many teams that either use GitHub Enterprise Cloud, do not use LDAP for authentication, or use a SAML provider other than what is natively supported. It supports both GitHub.com, GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) and GitHub, but it will need to live in a location that can access your LDAP servers.

Supported user directories

• LDAP
• Active Directory
• Azure AD
• Okta
• OneLogin
• Google Workspace
• Keycloak

Features

This utility provides the following functionality:

Feature	Supported	Description
Sync Users	Yes	Add or remove users from Teams in GitHub to keep in sync with Active Directory groups
Dynamic Config	Yes	Utilize a settings file to derive Active Directory and GitHub settings
LDAP SSL	Yes	SSL or TLS connections.
Failure notifications	Yes	Presently supports opening a GitHub issue when sync failed. The repo is configurable.
Sync on new team	Yes	Synchronize users when a new team is created
Sync on team edit	No	This event is not processed currently
Custom team/group maps	Yes	The team slug and group name will be matched automatically, unless you define a custom mapping with syncmap.yml
Force custom map	Yes	Sync only team defined in syncmap.yml
Dry run / Test mode	Yes	Run and print the differences, but make no changes
Nested teams/groups	No	Synchronize groups within groups. Presently, if a group is a member of another group, it is skipped

Creating the GitHub App on your GitHub instance

1. On your GitHub instance, visit the settings page on the organization that you want to own the GitHub App, and navigate to the GitHub Apps section.
   • You can access this page by visiting the following url: https://<MY_GITHUB_HOSTNAME>/organizations/<MY_ORG_NAME>/settings/apps
2. Create a new GitHub App with the following settings:
   • Webhook URL: URL of the machine on which this app has been deployed (Example: http://ip.of.machine:3000)
   • Homepage URL: URL of the machine on which this app has been deployed (Example: http://ip.of.machine:3000)
   • Webhook Secret: The webhook secret that will be or has been defined as an environment variable in your deployment environment as WEBHOOK_SECRET
   • Permissions and Events: This application will need to be able to manage teams on GitHub, so the events and permissions listed below will be required. For more information on how to create a GitHub App, please visit https://developer.github.com/apps/building-github-apps/creating-a-github-app
3. Once these have been configured, select the Create GitHub App button at the bottom of the page to continue
4. Make a note of the APP ID on your newly-created GitHub App. You will need to set this as an environment variable when configuring the app.
5. Generate and download a private key from the new App page, and store it in your deployment environment. You can either do this by saving the file directly in the environment and specifying its path with the environment variable PRIVATE_KEY_PATH
6. After you have created the GitHub App, you will need to install it to the desired GitHub Organizations.
   • Select Install App
   • Select All Repositories or the desired repositories you wish to watch

Permissions and Events

Permissions

Category	Attribute	Permission
Repository permissions	Issues	Read & write
Repository permissions	Metadata	Read-only
Organization permissions	Members	Read & write
User permissions	Email addresses	Read-only

Events

Event	Required?	Description
Team	Optional	Trigger when a new team is created, deleted, edited, renamed, etc.

Azure AD Permissions

Authentication methods

• Username/Password
• Service Principal
• Certificate
• Device Auth

This app requires the following Azure permissions:

• GroupMember.Read.All
• User.Read.All

Keycloak Permissions

If you have ADMIN_FINE_GRAINED_AUTHZ enabled, you only need the following permission for the user realm:

• view-users

Getting Started

To get started, ensure that you are using Python 3.9 (or update your Pipfile to the version you're running, 3.4+). The following additional libraries are required:

• Flask
• github3.py
• python-ldap3
• APScheduler
• python-dotenv
• PyYAML
• msal
• asyncio
• okta
• onelogin
• python-keycloak

Install the required libraries.

pipenv install

Once you have all of the requirements installed, be sure to edit the .env to match your environment.

Sample .env for GitHub App settings

## GitHub App settings
WEBHOOK_SECRET=development
APP_ID=12345
PRIVATE_KEY_PATH=.ssh/team-sync.pem
GHE_HOST=github.example.com

Sample .env for choosing your backend

## AzureAD = AAD
## AD/LDAP = LDAP
## Okta = OKTA
## OneLogin = ONELOGIN
USER_DIRECTORY=LDAP

## Sync users on username or email attribute
USER_SYNC_ATTRIBUTE=username

Sample .env for Active Directory

LDAP_SERVER_HOST=dc1.example.com
LDAP_SERVER_PORT=389
LDAP_BASE_DN="DC=example,DC=com"
LDAP_USER_BASE_DN="CN=Users,DC=example,DC=example"
LDAP_GROUP_BASE_DN="OU=Groups,DC=example,DC=example"
LDAP_USER_FILTER="(objectClass=person)"
LDAP_USER_ATTRIBUTE=sAMAccountName
LDAP_USER_MAIL_ATTRIBUTE=mail
LDAP_GROUP_FILTER="(&(objectClass=group)(cn={group_name}))"
LDAP_GROUP_MEMBER_ATTRIBUTE=member
LDAP_BIND_USER="bind-user@example.com"
LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD="p4$$w0rd"
LDAP_SEARCH_PAGE_SIZE=1000

Sample .env for OpenLDAP

LDAP_SERVER_HOST=dc1.example.com
LDAP_SERVER_PORT=389
LDAP_BASE_DN="dc=example,dc=com"
LDAP_USER_BASE_DN="ou=People,dc=example,dc=com"
LDAP_GROUP_BASE_DN="ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=com"
LDAP_USER_FILTER="(&(objectClass=person)({ldap_user_attribute}={username}))"
LDAP_USER_ATTRIBUTE=uid
LDAP_USER_MAIL_ATTRIBUTE=mail
LDAP_GROUP_FILTER="(&(objectClass=posixGroup)(cn={group_name}))"
LDAP_GROUP_MEMBER_ATTRIBUTE=memberUid
LDAP_BIND_USER="cn=admin,dc=example,dc=com"
LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD="p4$$w0rd"
LDAP_SEARCH_PAGE_SIZE=1000

Sample .env for AzureAD

AZURE_TENANT_ID="<tenant_id>"
AZURE_CLIENT_ID="<client_id>"
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="<client_secret>"
AZURE_APP_SCOPE="default"
AZURE_API_ENDPOINT="https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0"
# can also be an extensionAttribute
AZURE_USERNAME_ATTRIBUTE=userPrincipalName
AZURE_USER_IS_UPN=true
# use transitive members of a group instead of direct members
AZURE_USE_TRANSITIVE_GROUP_MEMBERS=false

Sample .env for Okta

OKTA_ORG_URL=https://example.okta.com
OKTA_USERNAME_ATTRIBUTE=github_username

# token login
OKTA_ACCESS_TOKEN=asdfghkjliptojkjsj00294759

# OAuth login
OKTA_AUTH_METHOD=oauth
OKTA_CLIENT_ID=abcdefghijkl
OKTA_SCOPES='okta.users.read okta.groups.read'
OKTA_PRIVATE_KEY='{"kty": "RSA", ...}'

Sample .env for Keycloak

KEYCLOAK_USERNAME=api-account
KEYCLOAK_PASSWORD=ExamplePassword
KEYCLOAK_REALM=ExampleCorp
KEYCLOAK_ADMIN_REALM=master
KEYCLOAK_USE_GITHUB_IDP=true

Sample .env for OneLogin

ONELOGIN_CLIENT_ID='asdafsflkjlk13q33433445wee'
ONELOGIN_CLIENT_SECRET='ca3a86f982fjjkjjkfkhls'
REGION=US

Sample .env settings for additional settings

## Additional settings
CHANGE_THRESHOLD=25
OPEN_ISSUE_ON_FAILURE=true
REPO_FOR_ISSUES=github-demo/demo-repo
ISSUE_ASSIGNEE=githubber
SYNC_SCHEDULE=0 * * * *
TEST_MODE=false
SYNCMAP_ONLY=false
EMU_SHORTCODE=volcano

### Automatically add users missing from the organization
ADD_MEMBER=false
## Automatically remove users from the organization that are not part of a team
REMOVE_ORG_MEMBERS_WITHOUT_TEAM=false

Sample .env setting for flask app

####################
## Flask Settings ##
####################
## Default: app, comment out to run once as a script
FLASK_APP=app
## Default: production
FLASK_ENV=development
## Default: 5000
FLASK_RUN_PORT=5000
## Default: 127.0.0.1
FLASK_RUN_HOST=0.0.0.0

Sample syncmap.yml custom mapping file

---
mapping:
  - github: demo-team
    directory: ldap super users
    org: my github org
  - github: demo-admin-2
    directory: some other group

The custom map uses slugs that are lowercase. If you don't specify organization name, it will synchronize all teams with same name in any organization.

Usage Examples

Start the application from Pipenv

This example runs the app in a standard Flask environment.

pipenv run flask run --host=0.0.0.0 --port=5000

Or you can run the app with Python directly.

pipenv run python app.py

Support

⚠️ This is free and open-source software that is supported by the open-source community, and is not included as part of GitHub's official platform support.

Credits

This project draws much from:

• Flask-GitHubApp
• github3.py
• msal
• okta
• ldap3