I have a mobile app that authenticates a user via a facebook login. This app then communicates with a RESTful php web service. Now, I know that facebook uses an OAuth dialog and a user session is created. Do I use facebook's OAuth token and authorize a user session, or do I have to have OAuth in my web service separately to manage user sessions.
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We developed a hybrid mobile applicacion as front-end integrated with a backend, wich includes a Facebook OAuth service. With this setup social authentication, through the web browser, it works fine.
Now we would like to use the native Facebook app installed on the mobile device (instead of the web browser) to authenticate our users against or backend, but we don't find how to implement the auth process.
Our backend follows OAuth2 of type "Authorisation Code Grant" (https://alexbilbie.com/guide-to-oauth-2-grants/) and, therefore, expects a code and a status parameters in the Facebook response (just like the first described auth). But in mobile, the Facebook SDK doesn't return this paramenters, only an accessToken. Because of that, we can't implement the auth process in our backend.
Is it possible to perform the OAuth process using an accessToken instead of the autorization code? Maybe is it possible to obtain the code and status parameters from the accessToken parameter with Facebook API?
I have a web application built with Spring and spring security that allows user to register ether via Facebbok or creating an account, in both cases an web app account is created. So the 2 registering methods are the following::
Registering directly on the web app: the username and password are stored in the db.
Registering via facebook: the user logins into facebook (Outh), the web app retrieve the data from facebook to fill the registration form. The web app prompt the user to create the webapp account. In my database I store web app user and facebook data (access token etc..), so that the second time I try to login I can match the facebook account with the web app account (I use spring social).
Now I'm creating a rest service for the mobile app and it requires authentication. I use the basic http auth to access the web services.
My question now is how to Log in a user in my web application using spring security?
What I thought was:
Mobile app logs into facebook and retrieve the access_token (no contact with the web application server yet)
Mobile app sends access token to the web app
Web app checks if the access token is valid ether with db or directly with facebook
In case is valid the access token, the app sends back to the mobile app the username and the password (could be encrypted with a private key algorithm)
Once receive the web app user and password the user is authenticated and this information are stored on the mobile and used for http auth.
Do you think this flow is secure? do you have other ideas?
Thank you in advance
I was wondering if user access tokens that are recieved through one platform can be used to access and make facebook calls through another.
For example:
I have a mobile app and a web server that work together. A user signs in through facebook on the mobile app(through single-sign-on). The user then uses the mobile app in a way that an internal service requires that an external service call to facebook is necessary. The internal services relays this to the web server, and the web server makes the actual call to facebook.
Work flow:
User signs into mobile app
mobile app sends user access token + service call needed to web server
Web server makes external call to facebook and returns information to mobile app.
So in short, the mobile app is not making the facebook calls, but the web server is.
My question is that if I authenticate a user through the mobile app, can I pass(and store) the users access token and use that to make calls to facebook through the web server?
The answer is yes.
I've done this successfully with mobile SDKs (Android & iOS) using the Facebook authentication to obtain an access token, then passing this access token to a PHP web application which successfully uses it with the PHP SDK client library.
The access token is also the only piece of information that needs to be transmitted.
As long as the application key and secret are the same on both clients, an access token should be valid on either.
I am developing a Facebook application for mobile platforms. The mobile part is being developed with PhoneGap and the server side is Python / Django.
The mobile app should be able to query Facebook API directly. Server should be able to query Facebook API on the users' behalf too. Thus the user should be authenticated both with Facebook and on the server (Django), and the server should have the user's Facebook authentication token.
What would be the best flow for authenticating the user on both sides? Is it reasonable to authenticate on Facebook via mobile app, then send the token to the server and create a django session on the server?
I had a similar requirement: jQueryMobile app with Ruby On Rails backend. In my case, I implemented the Facebook authentication on the backend using omniauth. The backend retrieves the Facebook access token and passes it to the jQueryMobile frontend. The frontend then uses JSONP to retrieve the user's friend list. The advantage of this approach is that there is a single point of authentication -- Facebook auth at the backend.
You can find a demo of my app and the full source code at http://csgrad.blogspot.com/2011/07/jquerymobile-app-with-facebook.html
I have a mobile app that allows users to login through facebook connect.
There is also a webservice that the mobile app will use.
Can the mobile app share its auth token with the webservice?
user login to facebook through mobile app
mobile app sends auth token to webservice
webservice queries facebook for user details
or would the mobile app query facebook and then pass the information to the webservice?
user login to facebook through mobile app
mobile app queries facebook for user details
mobile app sends details to webservice
Yes. The API doesn't care where you get the token from, as long as you're using the same AppID/Secret. This is commonly used in offline data access scenarios (user authenticates through web app, backend service updates in background). Do you have a specific example where this doens't work?