I would think this question has been asked 1,000 times, but I actually haven't been able to find it anywhere (at least not for Laravel 5.2). I'm trying to implement user admin functionality through a RESTful API (I'm not talking about OAuth2, I already got that up and running). Basically, I need all the stuff Route::auth() does through a web interface, but I want to do it without the web interface and without the redirects that Route::auth() returns.
It seems like I can send POST requests to the underlying routes of Route::auth() (register, login, logout, password...) and it properly validates the POST and acts, but there's no useful data returned and it always redirects to / as the response. For example, if I register a new user, it creates the account correctly and redirects to /, but there's no "success" message. If I try to register a new user with an email address that's already in the user table, it catches that the user already exists and does not create a duplicate, but the response doesn't indicate that. It still just redirects to / with no other response. I don't get any sort of error code or message to tell my app that the user already exists.
Before anyone links to jwt-auth, I've looked at it already and I don't think it does what I'm talking about here.
Is there something I'm missing or do I need to re-write all of these routes and auth methods for proper API functionality?
Related
I use an authentication service Auth0 to allow users to log into my application. The application is a Q&A platform much like stackoverflow. I store a user profile on my server with information such as: 'about me', votes, preferences, etc.
When new user signs in i need to do 1 of 2 things:
For an existing user - retrieve the user profile from my api server
For a new user - create a new profile on the database
After the user signs in, Auth0(the authentication service) will send me some details(unique id, name and email) about the user but it does not indicate whether this is a new user(a sign up) or a existing user(a sign in).
This is not a complex problem but it would be good to understand best practice. I can think of 2 less than ideal ways to deal with this:
**Solution 1 - GET request **
Send a get request to api server passing the unique id
If a record is found return it
Else create new profile on db and return the new profile
This seems incorrect because the GET request should not be writing to the server.
**Solution 2 - One GET and a conditional POST request **
Send a get request to api server passing the unique id
The server checks the db and returns the profile or an error message
If the api server returns an error message send a post request to create a new profile
Else redirect to the home page
This seems inefficient because we need 2 requests to achieve a simple result.
Can anyone shed some light on what's best practice?
There's an extra option. You can use a rule in Auth0 to send a POST to the /users/create endpoint in your API server when it's the first time the user is logging in, assuming both the user database in Auth0 and in your app are up-to-date.
It would look something like this:
[...]
var loginCount = context.stats.loginsCount;
if (loginCount == 1) {
// send POST to your API and create the user
// most likely you'll want to await for response before moving on with the login flow
}
[...]
If, on the other hand, you're referring to proper API design and how to implement a find-or-create endpoint that's RESTful, maybe this answer is useful.
There seems to be a bit of disagreement on the best approach and some interesting subtleties as discussed in this post: REST Lazy Reference Create GET or POST?
Please read the entire post but I lean towards #Cormac Mulhall and #Blake Mitchell answers:
The client wants the current state of the resource from the server. It is not aware this might mean creating a resource and it does not care one jolt that this is the first time anyone has attempted to get this resource before, nor that the server has to create the resource on its end.
The following quote from The RESTful cookbook provided by #Blake Mitchell makes a subtle distinction which also supports Mulhall's view:
What are idempotent and/or safe methods?
Safe methods are HTTP methods that do not modify resources. For instance, using GET or HEAD on a resource URL, should NEVER change the resource. However, this is not completely true. It means: it won't change the resource representation. It is still possible, that safe methods do change things on a server or resource, but this should not reflect in a different representation.
Finally this key distinction is made in Section 9.1.1 of the HTTP specification:
Naturally, it is not possible to ensure that the server does not
generate side-effects as a result of performing a GET request; in
fact, some dynamic resources consider that a feature. The important
distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects,
so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.
Going back to the initial question, the above seems to support Solution 1 which is to create the profile on the server if it does not already exist.
Background checks:
I read through several blogs but unable to find anything specific around this question.
Below is the architecture:
HTTPS website (no login needed) have common LIKE button.
Upon clicking, user enters email address and solves CAPTCHA and click SAVE button.
Rest call is made with data and DB stores the values.
Problem:
Now if someone try to call Rest from say POSTMAN, there is no way to authenticate whether call is coming from Https website or somewhere else.
Question:
Is there any way to ensure that Rest will understand whether call is coming from https site only in order to process request further?
Im writing a user registration mechanism by hand so I dont want to use existing plugins or something.
Im wondering what the best way would be. I planning to do the following abstract steps:
Writing an component which is in charge to output a button which calls the facebook-api --> login in via facebook (Im getting token and user name/id)
In my route im using that Data to call the REST-Server-Backend of my app. I will pass the token as well as the username/id to the Server. (POST api.myapp.com/users)
The Server recieves the request and will validate via Facebook-API
the user data and token on its own --> if valid: Add new user to
database.
If the user wants to login now (after registration) he will do again
step no.1 and than will ask the server if the user is existing. But
how: Since ember suggest that the REST-Server is somekind of a
CRUD-Server and using the store is for working for model data only, there
is no possiblity to do a "logic"-call to the server like "ask
him if user with id is existing". Should I call "GET ../users/" and than check in my route if the sum of the returned records are smaller than 1?
So is that a common pattern?
Sounds like a fairly simple OAuth workflow but obviously refer to the facebook docs. As far as point 4 is concerned, I would suggest that yes, on login you make a request for the login route on your server (which should abstract the facebook OAuth call), and if the user is authenticated, then send down the user resource, otherwise redirect them to the login and send down some sort of 401 HTTP error.
As all your API calls should be authenticated too your user won't be able to access any protected API resources.
I would also suggest you look into an ember plugin like ember-simple-auth which also supports OAuth.
You can find more information about OAuth2 workflows here.
I'm slowly beginning to unerstand REST and theres one thing thats confusing me .
I understand that most of the things in REST is a "resource" . So i was wondering what kind of a resource would we be referring to in the case of a user signup / login ?
Is it users ? Then does it mean that a POST on users would signup for a new user . If that is the case , then how do i authenticate a user ? a GET on users with an encoded password / username pair?
I'm really confused with this.
I may be COMPLETELY wrong in my understanding given that i'm just starting to understand REST.
Any help is appreciated !
Thanks!
It's a bit of an unusual but common problem for REST. Keep thinking about resources.
When you login you're asking the server to create a session for you to access certain resources. So in this case the resource to create would be a session. So perhaps the url would be /api/sessions and a POST to that url with a session object (which could just be an object consisting of a username or password and perhaps the UUID) would create a session. In true REST you'd probably point to a new session at /api/sessions/{UUID} but in reality (and for security purposes) you'd probably just register a session cookie.
That's my own personal approach to login forms if I were to implement them myself but I always tend to use Spring security for that job so this requirement never really takes much consideration.
I am working on something similar and this is the solution I have taken so far. Any suggestions welcome :)
I have users exclusively for singup and account modifications.
GET /users/{id} gets a user for the profile page for instance
PUT /users creates a new user with username and password. In reality this should send an email with a link to somewhere that confirms the signup with a GET method.
POST /users/{id} modifies the user (for example change password)
DELETE /users/{id}
For authentication I tend to think that the resource I request is the token or the authentication. I have tried to avoid the word "session" because it is supposed to be anti-RESTful, but if you are just creating the illusion of an actual server-side session for your clients, I guess it is fine.
PUT /authentication/ with usename/password returns Set-Cookie with the pair user_id / hashed value. Maybe it should be POST. Not sure
DELETE /authentication/{user_id} just deletes the cookie and the user is signed out. Maybe instead of user_id it should be a unique token_id.
Resources can be created, read, update and deleted using a restful approach, see e.g.:
https://cwiki.apache.org/S2PLUGINS/restful-crud-for-html-methods.html
So if you'd like to administrate you users this would be the restful approach to do so.
If you'd like to authenticate the users which you have in your administration dataset you need
to design or select a restful authentication mechanism see e.g.
http://de.slideshare.net/sullis/oauth-and-rest-web-services
http://www.thebuzzmedia.com/designing-a-secure-rest-api-without-oauth-authentication/
For a jumpstart on these issues you might want to check out dropwizard:
http://dropwizard.codahale.com/
A resource may have one URI or many
but One URI will have exactly one Resource
Therefore, When Authenticating a user, you are addressing a user who is already registered
While when registering, you are addressing the user (resource) which is yet to be registered.
All you need is a way to process it to your SERVER.
THIS is an example taken from SUGARCRM REST web services implementation.
REST is like http requests to your SERVER.
For eg, when implementing REST Web Services.
Every REST Request is going to same File say
www.your_domain.com/Rest.php?json={your_json_method:'method',params:'watever'}
Where in Json is the request you are sending as a parameters
Requesting to authenticate a user
{method:'SignUp', username:'abc', pass:'pass', confirm_pass:'pass'}
Requesting to register a user
{method:'Login', username:'abc', pass:'pass'}
by this way you can have as many params as you want
Remember JSON is not necessory to be used. you can use simple get params for your query
I have a Facebook canvas app. I am using the JS SDK to authenticate the user on the browser-side and request various information via FB.api (e.g. name, friends, etc.).
I also want to persist some additional user information (not held on Facebook) to the database on my server by making an ajax call:
{ userFavouriteColour: "Red" }
To save this on the server and associate with the correct user, I need to know the Facebook uid and this presents a problem. How do I pass the uid from the client to the server.
Option 1: Add uid to the ajax request:
{ uid: "1234567890",
userFavouriteColour: "Red" }
This is obviously no good. It would be trivial for anyone to make an ajax request to my web service using someone else's Facebook Id and change their favourite colour.
Option 2: On the server, extract the uid from a cookie:
Is this even possible? I have read that Facebook sets a cookie containing the uid and access token but do I have access to this cookie on my domain? More importantly, can I securely extract the uid form the cookie or is this open to spoofing just like option 1.
Option 3: User server-side authentication on the server:
I could use the server-side authentication to validate the user identity on my server. But will this work if I am already using client-side authentication on the browser? Will I end up with two different access tokens? I would like to make FB.api requests from the browser so I need the access token on the client (not just on the server).
This must be a very common scenario so I think I'm missing something fundamental. I have read a lot of the Facebook documentation (various authentication flows, access tokens, signed_request, etc.) and many posts on SO, but I still don't understand how client-side authentication and server-side authentication play nicely together.
In short, I want to know the user's identity on the server but still make requests to the Facebook api from the client browser?
(I am using ASP.NET and the Facebook C# SDK on the server)
EDIT: Added bounty. I was hoping to get a more deifnitive, official recommendation on how to handle this situation, or even an example. As said, I have already read a lot of the official FB docs on authentication flows but I still can't find anything definitive on how client-side and server-side authentication work together.
Option 1:
The easiest way I can think of is to include the accessToken in JS and pass it with the ajax call.
Option 2:
Using the same as option 1, but instead of sending just the accessToken, send the signedRequest.
On the server side you can decode it using (TryParseSignedRequest method) which will give you the UserID :-)
Note: signedRequest is encrypted with the application Secret. you are the only one who should know it, so you are safe on that end.
Disclaimer:
I have no coding experience in C#, but a little search in google gave me this:
Facebook C# SDK for ASP.NET
Making AJAX Requests with the Facebook C# SDK
It's very simple actually.
When the user loads you app use the server side authentication, get the access token and load the user data by issuing an api request from the server.
On the server side you'll have everything you need and it's sandboxed.
When the page renders for the user, using the js sdk get the user authentication data, you should be able to use FB.getLoginStatus since the user already went through the server side authentication.
Now on the client side you also have an access token which you can use to get the user data from the graph api.
The two tokens will be different, and will also have different expiration, but that should not be a problem, both token should work properly as you'd expect them to.
Since both sides have their own token and a way to make requests to the api, there's no need to send any fb data between them.
So the 3rd option you mentioned, to me, sounds the best, and it's really simple to implement that too.
Edit
All facebook SDKs are just wrappers for http request since the entire fb api is made on http requests.
The SDKs just give you easy and shorter access to the data with out the need to build the url yourself (with all the different possible parameters), make the request and parse the response.
To be completely honest, I think that stop providing a way for the C# SDK to support server side authentication is a very bad decision.
What's the point in providing a SDK which does not implement the entire api?
The best answer to your question, from my experience, is to use both server and client side authentication, and since the C# SDK does not support it, my advice to you is to create your own SDK.
It's not complicated at all, I already implemented it for python and java (twice), and since you'll be developing it for your own needs it can be tailored for your exact needs, unlike a public SDK which should support all possible options.
2nd Edit
There's no need to create a completely new SDK, you can just "extend" the ones you're using and add the missing parts that you need, like sever side authentication support.
I don't know if it's language specific but using both server-side and client-side authentication does no harm.
You can work on option 2 but yes, that will be also vulnerable to spoofing.
Doing option 3, you will be having a single access token for that user session, so that would be the best choice according to me since you always have chance of spoofing when passing user information from client side.
I had exactly the same question recently. It's option 2. Check this post from the Facebook blog.
To be honest I am not enough of a hacker to know if you could spoof the UID in the cookie, but this seems to be the 'official' way to do it.
EDIT: to the other question under option 2, yes, I believe you have to access this cookie on your domain.