kcadm created client is always unauthorized

Question

I am trying to automate setting up of a Keycloak server for an application. Part of that is to set up a Keycloak client using the admin CLI:

kcadm.sh create clients -r MyRealm -s clientId=my-client -s enabled=true

That seems to work; I can see the client is present using the admin console. However, if I try to use that client with the Java client (creating a Keycloak object) even a read-only operation fails due to HTTP 401 Unauthorized. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

After much experimenting, I discovered the cause of the problem. If you create a client using the UI, the UI sets the client to be public client with direct access grants enabled by default. The admin CLI however does not, and that results in access through the Java client being denied. You must instead explicitly set those when you create the client using the admin CLI:

kcadm.sh create clients -r MyRealm -s clientId=mc-client -s enabled=true -s directAccessGrantsEnabled=true -s publicClient=true