+1 to André's suggestion below.
If you find that you're going to have to add a field to your API to
indicate the userID along with a two-legged transaction, you're likely
doing things wrong.
We've used the auto-approve method below for several applications, and
users don't seem to know or care what's really happening. They show up
to the client app, they see a little waiting screen the first time
through, and then it works. That is to say, it's nearly as transparent
as a two-legged scenario but with better security and flexibility aspects.
The two-legged approach works best when:
1) There's no user involved in the transaction at all (traditional
system-to-system data exchange)
2) You *can't* have the user present on any part of the transaction
(it must work fully back-channel)
If you can count on the user being there at any point, even to just kick
things off, then the code flow is likely more like what you're after.
-- Justin
On 03/01/2012 05:24 PM, André DeMarre wrote:
Pete,
Shane is right; the way you described your problem, the client
credential grant type may be appropriate. That's especially true if
the client will be accessing resources that don't necessarily belong
to specific users. But if the client (web site) will be using the API
(OAuth auth/resource server) to access user-specific resources, then
the authorization code grant type is a better fit. It doesn't matter
that the OAuth server trusts the client without needing user
authorization.
The authorization code flow offers a solution for user identification
that is absent in the client credential flow. In other words, even
though the OAuth server trusts the client and will comply with all API
requests, how is the client x supposed to identify a user so it can
request the right resource from the resource server?
By using an authorization code grant, the client can acquire an access
token that is bound to a specific user. This is makes the
authorization code flow suitable for single sign-on implementations,
whereas the client credential flow is not appropriate for user
authentication.
Don't worry about the fact that the client does not need to be
authorized by the user. You can still use the authorization code flow,
and the authorization server will not need to prompt the user for
authorization because you will have pre-authorized the client for all
users.
As an added bonus, this sets you up perfectly for when you add new
clients which are not pre-authorized and need user authorization.
I hope that helps.
Regards,
Andre DeMarre
On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 6:59 PM, Shane B Weeden<[email protected]> wrote:
1. Yes, client credentials sounds right for what you described. Think of it
as lightweight b2b authentication in that sense (but two steps - one to get
a token, and another to use it).
2. Can't help you with source - but do have a product-based solution :)
3. Absolutely it should for the resource server, but the answer may depend
have same dependency on the implementation you use.
Regards,
Shane.
From: Pete Clark<[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]"<[email protected]>
Date: 29/02/2012 06:50 PM
Subject: [OAUTH-WG] Securing APIs with OAuth 2.0
Sent by: [email protected]
Hey all, I've joined the list because I'd like to use OAuth 2 to implement
security for a new set of REST APIs I'm developing for a client. I'm
coding with PHP, but my questions are more general. Right now, there will
be only one web site that uses the APIs, in a server-to-server fashion, and
currently we don't have a need for a third party application to gain access
to user data, such that a user would need to authorize that app. We do,
however, want to have that ability down the road. My question is, can I
still use OAuth 2 in some way to implement our first phase? From what I've
read, it seems like the "client credentials" flow is the one I want to use
for now. Can someone:
1) Confirm that that's what I should use for this first phase?
2) Point me to an implementation of this flow (in any language) that I
could use or port to PHP? I've found some libraries for php but can't
really tell, being new, if they offer the "client credentials" flow
3) Answer one more question.. Will using the client credentials flow now
allow me to move to one of the user-authorizes-external-app flows down the
road without having to reimplement or throw away the client credentials
flow code?
I apologize for all the questions, but these would really help point me in
the right direction.. Thank you for reading!
Sincerely,
Pete
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