Upgrade notes for SimpleSAMLphp 2.0

SimpleSAMLphp 2.0 is a major new release which has cleaned up support for a lot of things that have been marked deprecated in previous SimpleSAMLphp releases. The following changes are relevant for installers and/or developers.

Software requirements

The minimum PHP version required is now PHP 7.4.
Dropped support for Symfony 4 and Twig 2.

Not all modules included by default

The set of modules included in the base installation has been reduced. If you used some of the modules that were shipped with SimpleSAMLphp, you now have to manually install them using Composer. For example, to use the LDAP module:

composer require simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-ldap --update-no-dev

Functional changes

EntityIDs are no longer auto-generated. Make sure to set something sensible in the array-keys in metadata/saml20-idp-hosted.php and for any saml:SP in config/authsources.php (or to the existing entityIDs when upgrading an existing installation). If you are using a database to store metadata, make sure to replace any __DYNAMIC:<n>__ entityID's with a real value manually. Dynamic records are no longer loaded from the database. See the "Upgrading and EntityIDs" section at the end of the document for more information.
EntityIDs are now checked for validity in accordance to SAML 2.0 Core specification, section 8.3.6 Entity Identifier: "... The syntax of such an identifier is a URI of not more than 1024 characters in length."
Modules must be enabled through the module.enable option in config.php . Modules can no longer be enabled by having a file named enable or default-enable in the module's root directory.
The base URL of the SimpleSAMLphp installation no longer provides an admin menu. Instead this is now at the location <simpleSAMLphp base URL>/admin . The admin module needs to be enabled for this to work.
SAML AuthnRequests that are signed will have their signature validated unless specifically disabled by setting validate.authnrequest to false . If unset (or set to true ) signatures will be validated if present and requests not passing validation will be refused.
The default value for attrname-format was changed to 'urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:attrname-format:uri'.
In the core:TargetedID authproc-filter, the attributename setting has been renamed to identifyingAttribute . Similarly, in the saml:AttributeNameID, saml:PersistentNameID and saml:SQLPersistentNameId authproc-filters, the attribute setting has been renamed to identifyingAttribute for consistency with other NameID filters.
The default encryption algorithm is set from AES128_CBC to AES128_GCM . It is possible to switch back via the sharedkey_algorithm . Note however that CBC is vulnerable to the Padding oracle attack.
All support for the Shibboleth 1.3 / SAML 1.1 protocol has been removed.
Sessions are no longer backwards compatible with previous versions. Make sure to clear your session cache during the upgrade process. How to do this depends on your session backend.

Configuration changes

Our assets have been moved from the www to the public directory. You will have to update your webserver to reflect this change.

Quite some options have been changed or removed. We recommend to start with a fresh template from config/config.php.dist and migrate the settings you require to the new config file manually.

The date formatting when specifying a custom logging string has been changed from PHP's deprecated strftime() format to PHP's date() format.

The format of the NameIDPolicy option has been changed: to omit sending the element entirely, you can no longer specify false but need to set it to an empty array ( [] ).

Configuration options that have been removed:

simplesaml.nameidattribute . Use the appropriate authproc-filters instead.
languages[priorities] . No replacement.
attributes.extradictionaries . Add an attributes.po to your configured theme instead.
admin.protectindexpage . Replaced by the admin module which always requires login.
base64attributes . Obsolete functionality, individual attributes can still be en/decoded with the existing attributeencodings feature.
database.slaves . This is now called database.secondaries .
metadata.handler . Since a long time the preferred option is metadata.sources .

Changes relevant for (module) developers

The following changes are relevant for those having custom developed modules, authentication processing filters, themes, or that interface with the SimpleSAMLphp development API.

We expect your source files to exist in the src/ directory within your module. This used to be the lib/ directory, so you have to rename the directory and for composer-modules you have to update your composer.json file (specifically the psr-0 and psr-4 entries if you have them).
We expect your module assets to exist in the public/ directory within your module (was: www/ ).
Old JSON-formatted dictionaries have been replaced by gettext / .po-files; see migration guide
Old PHP templates have been replaced by Twig-templates; see migration guide
The source was completely typehinted; if you have custom authsources or authproc filters, make sure you change them to reflect the method signatures of the base classes.
Some hooks are no longer called:
- frontpage : replace with configpage
- htmlinject : use a Twig template override instead.
- metadata_hosted : no replacement
The following classes have been migrated to non-static:
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Arrays
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Attributes
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Auth
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Config
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Crypto
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\EMail
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\HTTP
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Net
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Random
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\System
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\Time
- \SimpleSAML\Utils\XML
If you use any of these classes in your modules or themes, you will now have to instantiate them so that:

// Old style
$x = \SimpleSAML\Utils\Arrays::arrayize($someVar)

becomes:

  // New style
  $arrayUtils = new \SimpleSAML\Utils\Arrays();
  $x = $arrayUtils->arrayize($someVar);

Database table schemes have been flattened. Upgrade paths are:
- Generic KVStore: 1.16+ > 2.0
- Logout store: 1.18+ > 2.0
Data stores have been refactored:
- lib/SimpleSAML/Store.php has been renamed to lib/SimpleSAML/Store/StoreFactory.php and is now solely a Factory-class
- All store implementations now implement \SimpleSAML\Store\StoreInterface :
  - lib/SimpleSAML/Store/SQL.php has been renamed to lib/SimpleSAML/Store/SQLStore.php
  - lib/SimpleSAML/Store/Memcache.php has been renamed to lib/SimpleSAML/Store/MemcacheStore.php
  - lib/SimpleSAML/Store/Redis.php has been renamed to lib/SimpleSAML/Store/RedisStore.php
The following methods have had their signature changed:
- Configuration::getValue
- Configuration::getBoolean
- Configuration::getString
- Configuration::getInteger
- Configuration::getIntegerRange
- Configuration::getValueValidate
- Configuration::getArray
- Configuration::getArrayize
- Configuration::getArrayizeString
- Configuration::getConfigItem
- Configuration::getLocalizedString
All of these methods no longer accept a default as their last parameter. Use their getOptional* counterparts instead.

Upgrading and EntityIDs

If you still have your 1.x installation available, the entityID you are using for your SP and IdP should be available in module.php/core/frontpage_federation.php location on your SimpleSAMLphp server.

For a service provider, if it was set as auto-generated in 1.19, it will likely have the form of ( https://yourhostname/simplesaml/module.php/saml/sp/metadata.php/default-sp ).

The EntityID is set in two locations, as the property 'entityID' for an SP and as the index in the $metadata array for an IdP. Examples of both are shown below.

For the SP you can set the EntityID as shown in the below fragment of authsources.php. In all of the below configuration fragments the EntityID is set to ( https://example.com/the-service/ ).

...
    'default-sp' => [
        'saml:SP',
        // The entity ID of this SP.
        'entityID' => 'https://example.com/the-service/',
...

One suggestion for forming an EntityID is to use the below scheme.

$entityid_sp = 'https://'
   . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']
   . '/simplesaml/module.php/saml/sp/metadata.php/default-sp';

For an IdP you might like to look at saml20-idp-hosted.php where the EntityID is used as the key in the metadata array.

...
$metadata['https://example.com/the-service/'] = [
...

If you use SimpleSAMLphp as an SP, the IdP you are using will have your correct entityID configured.