Portfolio
User Management Microservice
E-Learning / Corporate Training
PHP 8.1
Migration completed
50%
Faster user operations
SSO
Enterprise SSO integration
Overview
Circusstreet's monolithic PHP application was struggling to meet the demands of enterprise clients requiring SSO integration. I designed and built a new user management microservice from scratch while leading the PHP7 to PHP8.1 migration across the entire platform.
Business Context
Circusstreet provides digital marketing training to enterprise clients including major corporations. Their monolithic PHP application worked well for small clients but couldn't meet enterprise requirements. Large organizations needed Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with their identity providers (Azure AD, Okta), user provisioning via SCIM, and detailed audit logging. The existing tightly-coupled user management code made these features nearly impossible to implement safely.
Challenge
Monolithic application couldn't scale for enterprise clients. User management was tightly coupled and needed extraction into a separate service with SSO support.
- Tightly coupled user management in legacy monolith
- Enterprise clients requiring SAML/OAuth2 SSO
- Outdated PHP7 codebase with security concerns
Solution
We extracted user management into a standalone Symfony microservice with full OAuth2/SAML support, then systematically upgraded all services to PHP8.1.
- Designed and built user management microservice from scratch
- Led PHP7 to PHP8.1 migration across all services
- Implemented OAuth2/SSO for enterprise clients
Approach & Methodology
We took a microservice extraction approach, first identifying the user management bounded context using Event Storming. We designed clean API boundaries and built the new service using Symfony with a hexagonal architecture. The migration happened gradually - new SSO users went through the new service while existing users continued using the monolith. Once stable, we migrated existing users in batches.
Implementation Details
User Management Microservice
Built a new Symfony-based microservice handling all user operations, authentication, and authorization. Implemented clean API boundaries using DDD aggregates.
Enterprise SSO Integration
Implemented full OAuth2 and SAML 2.0 support for enterprise clients, enabling seamless single sign-on integration with Azure AD, Okta, and other identity providers.
Key Decisions
- Extracted user management as the first microservice to establish patterns and tooling for future extractions
- Chose Symfony over Laravel for the microservice due to better support for enterprise authentication standards
- Implemented the PHP8 migration alongside the extraction to avoid doing two risky changes sequentially
Tech Stack
Related Services
The following services were utilized in this project to deliver successful outcomes.
Lessons Learned
- Enterprise SSO requirements are more complex than they appear - plan for edge cases like SCIM provisioning, JIT user creation, and group syncing
- PHP8 migration was smoother than expected thanks to PHPStan and Rector - automated tooling is essential for large codebases
- Having a dedicated user management service enabled features (like user analytics) that would have been impossible in the monolith
Project Information
Timeline
5 months for service + migration
Team
3 developers (I was tech lead)
Results
PHP 8.1
Migration completed
50%
Faster user operations
SSO
Enterprise SSO integration
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