I'm looking to implement Single Sign On for a native iOS app whereby logging in with this single sign on gives the mobile device authenticated access to our private service in a fashion that is somewhat similar to oauth.
The marketing text on openid.net suggests that "OpenID is a safe, faster, and easier way to log in to web sites.". Emphasis on web sites.
So the question is: Is it reasonable to implement openID on a native mobile app, or is openID only for web sites.
I've been scouring the web and I'm not finding a way to fit openID in as my login option.
The best way to do this seems to be to use a UIWebView and render a log in page from your site in it. Once the user logs in, they'll be redirected back to your site and have an auth cookie, which you can extract, store, and send on subsequent HTTP requests to the server.
See this, which has a sample code link at the bottom.
OpenID sends its messages as a series of HTTP requests and responses. Your app and the openid provider must communicate to each other via HTTP post, and you will need to redirect the user to corresponding URLs, and have a URL for the user to be redirected back to. As such, you will probably find it difficult to integrate with your app.
Derek Knight claims to have been experimenting with iOS and OpenID using the Janrain Engage iOS SDK. Although the github link he references no longer exists and he doesnt provide a complete and verified solution, he does offer an idea for how it might work.
OpenID and iOS development - gordonknight.co.uk
Janrain Engage for your iPad Apps
The accepted answer diminish the OpenID protocol. OpenID is a federated authentication protocol aiming simple SSO experience, its a web based protocol but it can be implemented if you design an authentication broker.
APPs share nothing, apps should never access anything but identity token and access token (if allow). here is a link to get you starter in the right path to build seems-less SSO in the mobile between apps regardless the app isolation level.
https://www.pingidentity.com/developer/en/resources/napps-native-app-sso.html
Libraries:
https://github.com/openid/AppAuth-iOS
https://github.com/openid/AppAuth-Android
Related
I have a mobile application built upon Ionic Framework which uses many Cordova packages. We are upgrading the app from Ionic3 to Ionic5. In the Ionic3 application our .NET API was responsible to managing user logins. Going forward, in the Ionic5 app we will NOT be managing user credentials - we will be using 3rd party Identity Providers such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
We have implemented the Cordova packages to handle external authentication with Facebook and Google and it works fine. How do we tie the token that is received from Google/Facebook to our .NET API? When we try to use the token provided from Google/Facebook we - of course - get a 401 because our .NET API doesn't know about that token as it was issued from an external source.
I am aware of the process of how to enable the schema described here (External Authentication Services w/ASP.NET Web Api) but in this case the user agent browses to the Web Application in the browser. This is not true in my case as the user agent will be using a mobile application not a web site.
But I hope the principal is the same. But I'm missing something here.
The user will open the mobile app, authenticate with Google/Facebook and be issued a token. Now, what needs to happen to get that token to be recognized by my ASP.NET Web Api?
For example. When I registered my mobile app with Google Developer's Console I selected that the type of app is an Android application and was issued a Client ID for Android now how can I use this token in my ASP .NET Web API? There MUST be some way to tie the two together or some article out there.
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
Also, I looked at this post and see its 11 years old. Is there something here that I should be doing? Please help point me in the right direction. how-can-i-verify-a-google-authentication-api-access-token
It is about data ultimately, and identifying users in a consistent manner, then tracking their history with your app / business.
SOCIAL LOGIN PACKAGES
These are often cheap and nasty solutions that add complexity to your apps as you are finding.- especially when you need to look things up by user.
OPTION 1 - COMPLEX APPS
Your API could look at the token issuer (ISS claim in the token) and download token signing keys from either Facebook or Google - if JWKS endpoints exist. Then create a user from the access token's sub claim if required.
OPTION 2 - SIMPLER APPS
Deal with only a single type of token in your UIs and APIs, which will work like this. It moves the complexity to your Authorization Server (AS):
You have an Authorization Server (use Google maybe) to deal with token issuing and other central OAuth concerns
You have multiple Identity Providers (eg Facebook + Google) to support different login methods for users
During login Facebook posts a token to the AS
Then the AS issues its own token to your UI
The AS may be able to use Account Linking to provide a consistent user id regardless of login method
There is a learning curve in getting this working, but once done it can easily be scaled to many apps with zero code changes.
The proper answer is Auth0... see the below sequence diagram!
I like to distribute content from within our Content Management System to several online channels like the website, twitter, linkedin and, last but not least, Facebook. Editors can create items and, eventually after a worfklow process, distriute them amongst the different channels.
Off course the website is no problem (it's still a CMS, isn't it). Twitter integration was rather simple. But now I like to create a connector with Facebook.
The approach is like this.
Create a Facebook app: TheCMSFacebookConnector
Give it permissions to write on a wall, create events, add photo
collections, etc. A customer buys the CMS
Within the CMS Manager there is an action to connect the
TheCMSFacebookConnector app to the customers' (corporate) facebook
account
The OAuth dance is performed and the accesstoken en accesstoken secret are stored
From now we use the REST API to add content to the customer's corporate wall. This is exactly the way i did it for the Twitter integration.
But.........
choosing the right integration type
When I create the Facebook app, the Facebook asks me to tell how the app integrates with Facebook. The integration types that seems to fit the best are Native iOS App or Native Android App. In fact the CMS acts as a Native App as well. Has anyone a clue which App Integration type i have to choose?. And are there other parameters that are important to set in a, maybe, different way?
Choosing the authentication flow
A second question is about the OAuth dance. If we distribute the CMS amongst our customers, they host the CMS Manager environment in their DMZ with their own (mostly) corporate URL or, better, they host the CMS Server within the LAN and the Publication Server in the DMZ (we provide some tools to synchronize those servers)
When I do the OAuth dance, the CMS Manager (which is a webapplication) has is own URL. So in the definition of the app i cannot name an unique value for App Domains. From within the "OAuth dance"" code the redirect URL seems to have a connection with the App Domain and cannot be set in a dynamic way. So is it true that for the "OAuth dance" the only valid method is the client-side authentication flow?
Hope that someone can help me with, especially, the first question. Thanks in advance
E.
So is it true that for the "OAuth dance" the only valid method is the client-side authentication flow?
Not necessarily – you could always have an address from your app domain set as redirect_uri, and have that redirect to the CMS users web address afterwards (via a GET parameter in redirect_uri or something like that).
We are developing a hybrid mobile app (code is written in HTML and runs on browser shell as a native app on the device). We need to authenticate the user against an external security manager. I've seen the Gmail App in iPhone which opens a browser to authenticate the user. We are also looking to do something of that sort. We just need to gather your thoughts on how authentication can be done with some external security manager in a mobile app.
Also I noticed that Dailymotion website was able to know if the user is authenticated with Facebook. This looks like a cross domain authentication.
Can you please share your thoughts on how Google and others have implemented it?
What you are looking for is OAuth and OpenID services to federate your login. Depending on the architecture of your system you can implement whichever one you like or even a hybrid of both.
Take a look at this link: Federated Login for Google Accounts
It provides all the useful information you need.
Hmm this question seems old but in case you haven't found an answer here's how I did it with my hybrid apps :
open url on client side with the provider's (facebook/twitter/instagram) url for login
the user logs in and is redirected to the server's callback url (my server is written in nodejs)
once I've got the access token from the provider. I save this token and then create a token for the client to reuse every time the user wants to access a protected ressource.
Download the apk and test it.
If this is what you're looking for you can checkout both the client side code at : https://github.com/malikov/Authenticate.me-client-cordova-ionic
And the server side code at : https://github.com/malikov/Authenticate.me-Node-Server
Cheers
I have an app that can be accessed on mobile phones, both iOS and Android. The app has a social component to it, so people are sending data to and from my server.
I also have an interface for this app that will be accessible through Facebook.
When logging into the app via mobile device, using the native app for that device, one can just log in with standard username and password.
However, obviously if a user accesses the app in Facebook, they will expect to already be logged in since they are already logged into Facebook.
So I need to make it so that my app can take a log in from Facebook, pretty much automatically (?) for users who are coming at it from within Facebook.
Further, it's possible (dare I say "likely"?) a user might access the interface from both Facebook and one of the mobile versions of the app. In which case I need to be able to ensure that the username/password authentication they use on the device points to the same account associated with their Facebook login.
So... all that said... what kind of Facebook authentication should I be studying and implementing.? I'm looking at their documentation right now, and like all documentation, it's not easy to grasp. There is server-side (authentication code flow?) and client-side (implicit flow?), and authentication tokens, and I'm already a bit lost.
Also, I assume Facebook's approach is to want to take over my login in process completely, not live side by side with my mobile-device-only login, but I'd like to make sure users have the option of not using Facebook authentication if they don't want.
Can someone point me in the right direction for how to do this? Basically let me know which part of the documentation I should be focusing on.
And are there any gotchas I should watch out for?
Your server will receive a signed request when your app on facebook.com is loaded; from this you can find the FB uid of the user.
If you obtain the FB uid for users of your mobile device clients you'll be able to match your app's accounts between mobile device & facebook.com clients.
The bottom of the main authentication docs page gives links to further documentation for different client types. The main mobile authentication page has side-bar links to tutorials & SDKs for iOS & Android. Alternatively you could use the server-side OAuth flow as your devices have browsers that support this.
Once you've completed authentication on the mobile device it's simple to obtain the uid.
You can also use the Facebook authentication flow instead of your own username/password authentication.
For a middleware system with internet (which works inside a set-top box) I want to develop a primitive Facebook interface where users can type their user-names and password, showing their latest notification, messages and other casual stuff on the TV screen by using the recent Facebook Graph API.
This middleware program uses Java ME to run programs (such as this simple facebook app) and it can connect to internet however it doesn't have a real web browser. Without browser it can connect to any url to retrieve the JSON response however I am not sure how to achieve authentication without a real browser.
Under this circumstances, is it possible Facebook authentication? If you think so, what approach would you suggest ?
Thanks
Facebook provides trusted partners with a private Authorization API to get an OAuth 2 token from a username / password.
A more complicated approach would be doing something similar to how Netflix enrolls a device:
device calls server to obtain a Code
device shows code on screen and directs user to go to URL on server and enter Code
server redirects user to Facebook and obtains OAuth token, user told to go back to device
device calls server with Code and obtains OAuth token
device can now make calls directly on behalf of user
According to this documentation on "Desktop Application Authentication" I don't believe your desired result is possible:
Facebook's OAuth implementation does not include explicit desktop application support. However, if your desktop application can embed a Web browser, you can add Facebook support to your application easily using the same OAuth User-Agent Flow used by JavaScript clients.
However, it is clearly possible for certain vendors to do this, since Microsoft's Xbox 360 Facebook application does exactly what you are proposing. I'd be interested to see if anyone has dug up any API for doing this that Facebook doesn't want in their most obvious documentation.
This isn't an answer but I'm trying to do the same thing. Check out this guy's blog which uses another server to proxy the requests:
cory wiles blog
If you figure it out please post a detailed answer here so I can do it to.. :)
I think it is possible though it is pretty complicated and subject to sudden changes of Facebook interface. It might break the agreement between you and Facebook.
What you do is to emulate the Facebook.
One path you have to set up a Facebook application. Once you got the authorisation from user, you can to something with Graph API.
You need to the Facebook log-in process and authorisation process. There are some capturing tools on http/https request and response. Analyse them, both header and body.
Once you know the authorisation mechanism, you can replace it with you own. Everything afterward is on Graph API.
Another path is to emulate Facebook login and message and notification process. Capturing and analysis is needed.
In the past I have used a tool called screen-scraper (full disclosure: I used to work there) to automate logging in to facebook. Basically, it imitates a browser session; it allows you to set session variables (i.e. username, password) which would then be submitted to facebook, just as if the user had submitted them in a browser.
You may not be able to use screen-scraper in your set-top box environment (although it is java-based, so it's possible it would work). Even if it doesn't, you could implement a similar strategy in java, making the HTTP calls a browser would make to load the login page and submit the user's credentials. To keep the user's info safe make sure whatever HTTP client library you use supports HTTPS.
Proxy tools and extensions like Charles, Fiddler2, Firebug, Chrome's dev tools, etc. are helpful in seeing exactly what the browser is sending to the server in requests.