go-sdk/README.md
Maciej Kisiel c9317fb5b7
all: client side OAuth support (#785)
This PR introduces client-side OAuth support.

# Overall design philosophy

The main new interface introduced to support client-side OAuth is the
`OAuthHandler`. Contrary to its counter-parts in some other SDKs, it is
intentionally small and generic so that it can support most of the OAuth
authorization flow variants. The main `mcp` package purposefully
delegates almost all auth handling to `OAuthHandler` implementations.
This way, the `mcp` package continues to be largely OAuth agnostic.

The `auth` package comes with a default `OAuthHandler` implementation –
`AuthorizationCodeHandler`, which implements the authorization flow
for the `authorization_code` grant type, as defined in the [MCP
specification](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25/basic/authorization).
It is expected that the `OAuthHandler` implementation granularity will
be roughly per grant type, as this parameter influences the
authorization flow the most.

# Detailed design

## `OAuthHandler` (auth/client.go)

The main interface for the integration consists of two methods:

```go
type OAuthHandler interface {
	// TokenSource returns a token source to be used for outgoing requests.
	// Returned token source might be nil. In that case, the transport will not
	// add any authorization headers to the request.
	TokenSource(context.Context) (oauth2.TokenSource, error)

	// Authorize is called when an HTTP request results in an error that may
	// be addressed by the authorization flow (currently 401 Unauthorized and 403 Forbidden).
	// It is responsible for performing the OAuth flow to obtain an access token.
	// The arguments are the request that failed and the response that was received for it.
	// The headers of the request are available, but the body will have already been consumed
	// when Authorize is called.
	// If the returned error is nil, TokenSource is expected to return a non-nil token source.
	// After a successful call to Authorize, the HTTP request will be retried by the transport.
	// The function is responsible for closing the response body.
	Authorize(context.Context, *http.Request, *http.Response) error
}
```

`StreamableClientTransport` accepts this interface as a field and uses
the `TokenSource` method to add an `Authorization: Bearer` header to
outgoing requests to the MCP server. If the request fails with `401:
Unauthorized` or `403: Forbidden`, the transport calls `Authorize` to
perform the authorization flow. If `Authorize` returns a non-nil error,
the request is retried once. `Authorize` errors do not result in
termination of the client session (unless they happen during
connection initialization), as some OAuth flows are multi-legged and it should be
acceptable to retry for example when the authorization grant was
received.

*Note:* There was already an `OAuthHandler` type defined as part of a
previous iteration of OAuth support. It was renamed to
`OAuthHandlerLegacy`. This is the only backwards incompatible API change
in the experimental client `auth` part (protected by the
`mcp_go_client_oauth` Go build tag). The cost of replacing previous
usages is deemed worthwhile to maintain clear naming, under the
assumption that the experimental client `auth` part was not widely used.

## `AuthorizationCodeHandler` (auth/authorization_code.go)

This is the `OAuthHandler` implementation that fulfills the [MCP
specification](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2025-11-25/basic/authorization).
In particular, in supports:

- Protected Resource Metadata discovery and fetching
- Authorization Server Metadata discovery and fetching
- Client registration
  - OpenID Connect metadata document
  - Pre-registration
  - Dynamic Client Registration
- PKCE
- `client_secret_post`, `client_secret_basic` token endpoint
auth methods
- Automatic refresh of tokens

### Authorization Server redirect

As part of the flow for the `authorization_code` grant type, the client
needs to point the user to the authorization URL, so that they confirm
the access request. This design proposes that it will be supported via a
pluggable dependency that will initiate this process in an
application-specific way:

```go
type AuthorizationCodeHandler struct {
	...

	// AuthorizationCodeFetcher is a required function called to initiate the authorization flow.
	// It is responsible for opening the URL in a browser for the user to start the authorization process.
	// It should return the authorization code and state once the Authorization Server
	// redirects back to the RedirectURL.
	AuthorizationCodeFetcher func(ctx context.Context, args *AuthorizationArgs) (*AuthorizationResult, error)

	...
}
```

The function is supposed perform any application specific logic to handle the redirect
from the Authorization Server and return the resulting code and state.

## `oauthex` changes

Some additional/adjusted building blocks that may be useful when
creating `OAuthHandler` implementations are present in the `oauthex`
package:

- `auth_meta.go`: Authorization Server Metadata utilities:
  - `GetAuthServerMeta`: get Authorization Server Metadata from a URL
- `dcr.go`: Dynamic Client Registration utilities (unchanged)
- `resource_meta.go`: Protected Resource Metadata utilities:
- `GetProtectedResourceMetadata`: get Protected Resource Metadata from a
URL
  - `ParseWWWAuthenticate` – as per name (unchanged)
- [deprecated] `GetProtectedResourceMetadataFromID` and
`GetProtectedResourceMetadataFromHeader` in favor of more generic
`GetProtectedResourceMetadata`. They will be kept under the Go build tag
and removed one version of the SDK in the future.
2026-02-27 15:30:13 +01:00

163 lines
5.5 KiB
Markdown

<!-- Autogenerated by weave; DO NOT EDIT -->
# MCP Go SDK
[![Open in GitHub Codespaces](https://github.com/codespaces/badge.svg)](https://codespaces.new/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk)
[![PkgGoDev](https://pkg.go.dev/badge/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk)](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk)
[![OpenSSF Scorecard](https://api.scorecard.dev/projects/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/badge)](https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk)
This repository contains an implementation of the official Go software
development kit (SDK) for the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
## Package / Feature documentation
The SDK consists of several importable packages:
- The
[`github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/mcp`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/mcp)
package defines the primary APIs for constructing and using MCP clients and
servers.
- The
[`github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/jsonrpc`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/jsonrpc) package is for users implementing
their own transports.
- The
[`github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/auth`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/auth)
package provides some primitives for supporting OAuth.
- The
[`github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/oauthex`](https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/oauthex)
package provides extensions to the OAuth protocol, such as ProtectedResourceMetadata.
The SDK endeavors to implement the full MCP spec. The [`docs/`](/docs/) directory
contains feature documentation, mapping the MCP spec to the packages above.
## Version Compatibility
The following table shows which versions of the Go SDK support which versions of the MCP specification:
| SDK Version | Latest MCP Spec | All Supported MCP Specs |
|-----------------|-------------------|----------------------------------------------------|
| v1.4.0+ | 2025-11-25\* | 2025-11-25\*, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05 |
| v1.2.0 - v1.3.1 | 2025-11-25\*\* | 2025-11-25\*\*, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05 |
| v1.0.0 - v1.1.0 | 2025-06-18 | 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05 |
\* Client side OAuth has experimental support.
\*\* Partial support for 2025-11-25 (client side OAuth and Sampling with tools not available).
New releases of the SDK target only supported versions of Go. See
https://go.dev/doc/devel/release#policy for more information.
## Getting started
To get started creating an MCP server, create an `mcp.Server` instance, add
features to it, and then run it over an `mcp.Transport`. For example, this
server adds a single simple tool, and then connects it to clients over
stdin/stdout:
```go
package main
import (
"context"
"log"
"github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/mcp"
)
type Input struct {
Name string `json:"name" jsonschema:"the name of the person to greet"`
}
type Output struct {
Greeting string `json:"greeting" jsonschema:"the greeting to tell to the user"`
}
func SayHi(ctx context.Context, req *mcp.CallToolRequest, input Input) (
*mcp.CallToolResult,
Output,
error,
) {
return nil, Output{Greeting: "Hi " + input.Name}, nil
}
func main() {
// Create a server with a single tool.
server := mcp.NewServer(&mcp.Implementation{Name: "greeter", Version: "v1.0.0"}, nil)
mcp.AddTool(server, &mcp.Tool{Name: "greet", Description: "say hi"}, SayHi)
// Run the server over stdin/stdout, until the client disconnects.
if err := server.Run(context.Background(), &mcp.StdioTransport{}); err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
}
```
To communicate with that server, create an `mcp.Client` and connect it to the
corresponding server, by running the server command and communicating over its
stdin/stdout:
```go
package main
import (
"context"
"log"
"os/exec"
"github.com/modelcontextprotocol/go-sdk/mcp"
)
func main() {
ctx := context.Background()
// Create a new client, with no features.
client := mcp.NewClient(&mcp.Implementation{Name: "mcp-client", Version: "v1.0.0"}, nil)
// Connect to a server over stdin/stdout.
transport := &mcp.CommandTransport{Command: exec.Command("myserver")}
session, err := client.Connect(ctx, transport, nil)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
defer session.Close()
// Call a tool on the server.
params := &mcp.CallToolParams{
Name: "greet",
Arguments: map[string]any{"name": "you"},
}
res, err := session.CallTool(ctx, params)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("CallTool failed: %v", err)
}
if res.IsError {
log.Fatal("tool failed")
}
for _, c := range res.Content {
log.Print(c.(*mcp.TextContent).Text)
}
}
```
The [`examples/`](/examples/) directory contains more example clients and
servers.
## Contributing
We welcome contributions to the SDK! Please see
[CONTRIBUTING.md](/CONTRIBUTING.md) for details of how to contribute.
## Acknowledgements / Alternatives
Several third party Go MCP SDKs inspired the development and design of this
official SDK, and continue to be viable alternatives, notably
[mcp-go](https://github.com/mark3labs/mcp-go), originally authored by Ed Zynda.
We are grateful to Ed as well as the other contributors to mcp-go, and to
authors and contributors of other SDKs such as
[mcp-golang](https://github.com/metoro-io/mcp-golang) and
[go-mcp](https://github.com/ThinkInAIXYZ/go-mcp). Thanks to their work, there
is a thriving ecosystem of Go MCP clients and servers.
## License
This project is licensed under Apache 2.0 for new contributions, with existing
code under MIT - see the [LICENSE](./LICENSE) file for details.