I have a drop-down in my application for which i populate the data using an Ajax call as shown below. This works fine and my Web API URL is "http://example.com/Service.svc/json/getairports"
$(function () {
$.getJSON("http://example.com/Service.svc/json/getairports", {}, function (data) {
$("#airport-departure-modal, #destination-airport-modal").html("")
$.each(data, function (index, element) {
$("#airport-departure-modal, #destination-airport-modal").append("<option id=" + element["AirportCode"] + ">" + element["AirportName"] + "</option>");
});
});
});
But my worry is security since anyone can view this URL using view source or developer tools. So i wanted to bring in a token and pass it to the service like "http://example.com/Service.svc/json/getairports?token=SECUREKEY" but i wonder how this can solve the problem since secure key also visible in the view source. So my question is how can i keep the secure key invisible in the client side or dynamically passed only when the ajax call is initiated?
Just for information, i will be using HTTPS in production so that sniffing over the wire is taken care. Also not that, this service is going to be used only within the same application though Web API service might be hosted on a separate node.
Kindly advise if there might be some alternative but simple solution for the above scenario. i am aware of other advanced mechanisms such as OAuth,HMAC, Amazon S3, etc. But i just want to have a simple solution.
What exactly are you trying to solve? Do you want to prevent a user from calling your API programmatically? If your browser can get something, so can a user with the power of view-source - so that's a fruitless effort. Really though, it sounds like you want to prevent CSRF.
This answer should be helpful.
Related
I have a purchased license at fusion charts. Fusion charts document says here... https://www.fusioncharts.com/dev/upgrading/license-activation that i have to use this function call for applying license...
FusionCharts.options.license({
key: 'KEY_GOES_HERE',
creditLabel: false,
});
if i put my key in that anyone visiting my website can easily take it from view -> source of browser. how do i avoid it ? It is simple HTML website.
You can use either of the followings :
Instead of passing the keys directly in JS code, pass them via the environment, application variables. And add the env file to gitignore
Use Obfuscation for the key and JS code being used for license activation.
You can store the value of the key in your database & and fetch the data value so that the end-user is unable to access it.
If you know the domain/sub-domains where charts will be used, you can restrict the license keys to those domains by sending a request to sales#fusioncharts.com
As far as I know, there is no way to completely hide it from the frontend. The reason for this is that even if the key is hidden in some way when the request is made, the information has to exist and so the key could be found by looking at the request data.
What you wish to protect against determines how you should go about it. If you would just like to hide it from being picked up by webscrapers, then I would imagine encrypting it and then decrypting it before you send would be sufficient.
If you would like to protect against anyone stealing it, then the only way is to have a server act as a proxy. You would make a call to an API which would then use your API key on the backend, away from the prying eyes of users. Your backend API would then just return to the user the response from fusioncharts.
In a plain Play application I have the following scenario.
A route file which looks like this:
GET /accounts/add controllers.Accounts.add()
POST /accounts controllers.Accounts.create()
The first route results in a view where I can add a new account. The form to submit the new account looks something like this:
#helper.form(action = routes.Accounts.create()) {...}
Now the controller binds the input to the form and checks for any validation errors:
public static Result create() {
Form<Account> form = Form.form(Account.class).bindFromRequest();
if (form.hasErrors()) {
return badRequest(views.html.account.add.render(form));
}
...
}
Now the thing is, the client will see the same view with some additional error messages. However, meanwhile the URL has changed from http://example.com/accounts/add to http://example.com/accounts.
If the client now reloads the browser this calls GET http://example.com/accounts (which isn't even mapped in this scenario - thus getting a 404 - Not Found).
Maybe it's just me but I find this kind of annoying and browsing some GitHub projects I couldn't find a good solution for this case.
Of cause things would be much simpler if the second route is rewritten to:
POST /accounts/add controllers.Accounts.create()
... in which case everything works fine. But from a REST point of view this doesn't feel good either. The same applies to update scenarios (having GET /accounts/:id/update vs. PUT /accounts/:id).
Is there a guide on how to handle this? Am I getting something wrong or is this no problem at all (from a pragmatic point of view)?
It's not possible to leave the previous URL because a request for a new address has already been made. A controller only provides response for a requested resource. To go to the previous URL you could only make a redirect in case of validation failure but you would lost errors that way so this is not a solution.
I suggest mapping both actions with the same URL. This way you would solve problem with the browser reload.
If you create a REST service for http clients that aren't browsers you will probably want to serve different response than a simple http page. The separation of actions for particular clients could be a good solution for keeping REST API clean and a browser user happy.
First things first. I'm a complete OAuth newbie. This will be my first stab at it, and things are getting hairy...
I'm writing a single page application using Durandal & Web API.
The user needs to be able to login using any social network.
I don't have access to a database whatsoever, I have to call an unprotected 3rd party web service which I consume server-side, and need to protect using OAuth.
So I've managed to add the files to my solution which generates the login using facebook contol/button (created a new MVC4 web application, and did a manual copy and paste of all the auth related files, updated bootstrappers etc..), and the code seems to work for the most part.
When facebook redirects back to
[AllowAnonymous]
public ActionResult ExternalLoginCallback(string returnUrl)
{
AuthenticationResult result = OAuthWebSecurity.VerifyAuthentication(this.Url.Action("ExternalLoginCallback", new { ReturnUrl = returnUrl }));
if (!result.IsSuccessful)
{
return this.RedirectToAction("ExternalLoginFailure");
}
if (OAuthWebSecurity.Login(result.Provider, result.ProviderUserId, createPersistentCookie: false))
{
return this.RedirectToLocal(returnUrl);
}
//code removed for brevity ....
}
I get the error specified once the following line tries to execute.
OAuthWebSecurity.Login(result.Provider, result.ProviderUserId, createPersistentCookie: false)
I've removed the [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute from the controller, as I don't have a database.
Please forgive me if this is the dumbest question ever, but...
Why does the login fail? I mean at that point, isn't the app trying to log into facebook, why does it need a databse? Or am I correct in saying I can remove/replace that code section, with a login/authorise call on the web-service I'm using?
Not the dumbest question ever. Not by a long shot. But you are getting the error because your membership provider is still set to use the SimpleMembershipProvider and OAuthWebSecurity will use the default membership provider. If you don't want to use a database you will have to create or find a different membership provider to use.
EDIT:
I know you said you don't have access to a DB but if you can use SQL Compact you can just stick with the default SimpleMembershipProvider(check out Hanselman's blog) or DevArt has a SQLLite provider. Also the MemFlex Project has a RavenDb provider. If none of those work I think you might just have to write your own.
I'm using the Javascript SDK inside a node.js (Express) App.
Connecting Users works fine, but the connection does not persist between page reloads.
Is this the default behaviour, or is the User supposed to stay connected in new requests?
Do I have to use OAuth token authentication and if so, how can this be done with the JS-SDK?
Inside the "Permission"-Popup, Users are already logged in with soundlcoud, though.
(just have to click the "connect" button each time)
Figured I'd share my answer for those who are unsatisfied with the current answers for automated oauth:
Retrieving access_token:
I had to define get and set cookie functions and then I use the functions to set and retrieve a function holding the access token. I'm not going to give these functions for conciseness but you can easily find them with a google search. I then use this line of code to get the SC access token (once the user has authenticated for the first time)
SC.accessToken()
Setting token:
So this is kind of just an elephant in the room in my opinion that for some reason no one has mentioned. How in the **** do you connect w/ SC using the access token? Do you set it as oauth param? On each call pass it? Well, after experimenting with putting the parameter in every single place I could think, I found out you have to do something like this:
SC.initialize({
client_id: '[removed for security reasons]',
client_secret: '[removed for security reasons]',
redirect_uri: '[removed for security reasons]',
access_token: getCookie("sc_lm2"),
scope: 'non-expiring'
});
//Where "sc_lm2" is the name of my cookie
Hope the helps! Took me a while to figure this out for such a simple thing
EDIT
Using PHP and Wordpress:
$json = wp_remote_get("http://api.soundcloud.com/users/[user_id]/tracks.json?client_id=[client_id]");
$soundcloudData = json_decode($json['body'],true);
(substitue cURL functionality if you're not using Wordpress). #krafty I assume you would just change the endpoint from "/tracks" to "/users" but I can't say I have ever really needed to grab anything but tracks using the Soundcloud API. Hope this helps, though I'm not sure I fully understand what it is that you are trying to accomplish (or rather, how exactly you're going about it) - are you trying to allow user logins? If you want to explain fully what you're trying to accomplish and the steps you're taking I'd be happy to take a crack at it.
Yep, this is the way to do it, officially. :)
For the Next SoundCloud site, we store the token in localStorage (until the user logs out, of course). In each AJAX request to the API from the front end, we put the oauth token in a request header:
jqXHR.setRequestHeader('Authorization', 'OAuth ' + the_oauth_token);
I'm successfully using Node.js + Express + Everyauth ( https://github.com/abelmartin/Express-And-Everyauth/blob/master/app.js ) to login to Facebook, Twitter, etc. from my application.
The problem I'm trying to wrap my head around is that Everyauth seems to be "configure and forget." I set up a single everyauth object and configure it to act as middleware for express, and then forget about it. For example, if I want to create a mobile Facebook login I do:
var app = express.createServer();
everyauth.facebook
.appId('AAAA')
.appSecret('BBBB')
.entryPath('/login/facebook')
.callbackPath('/callback/facebook')
.mobile(true); // mobile!
app.use(everyauth.middleware());
everyauth.helpExpress(app);
app.listen(8000);
Here's the problem:
Both mobile and non-mobile clients will connect to my server, and I don't know which is connecting until the connection is made. Even worse, I need to support multiple Facebook app IDs (and, again, I don't know which one I will want to use until the client connects and I partially parse the input). Because everyauth is a singleton which in configured once, I cannot see how to make these changes to the configuration based upon the request that is made.
What it seems like is that I need to create some sort of middleware which acts before the everyauth middleware to configure the everyauth object, such that everyauth subsequently uses the correct appId/appSecret/mobile parameters. I have no clue how to go about this...
Suggestions?
Here's the best idea I have so far, though it seems terrible:
Create an everyauth object for every possible configuration using a different entryPath for each...
Apparently I jumped the gun and wrote this before my morning cup of coffee, because I answered my own question, and it was quite easy to implement. Basically I just had to create my own custom express middleware to switch the everyauth configuration before the everyauth gets its grubby paws on the request, so...
var configureEveryauth = function()
{
return function configure(req, res, next) {
// make some changes to the everyauth object as needed....
next();
};
}
and now my setup becomes:
var app = express.createServer();
everyauth.facebook
.entryPath('/login/facebook')
.callbackPath('/callback/facebook');
app.use(configureEveryauth());
app.use(everyauth.middleware());
everyauth.helpExpress(app);
app.listen(8000);
Notice that I don't even bother fully configuring the everyauth Facebook object during the startup, since I know that the middleware will fill in the missing params.