I am trying to connect to Salesforce.com using their OAuth 2.0 interface. I have found solutions like LROAuth2Client that allow me to open a webpage and authenticate like that. But is there a way to do this all through the backend without going to a webpage first so I can have it more integrated into the App?
I am new to OAuth so I don't know all the limitations.
Thanks in advance.
Salesforce supports the OAuth2 username/password option, which is all done without a webpage. e.g. using curl you'd do
curl -v https://login.salesforce.com/services/oauth2/token -d "grant_type=password" -d "client_id=xxxxxxxxxx" -d "client_secret=1234567890" -d "username=noreply#salesforce.com" -d "password=XXXXXXXXX"
Having said that, the web/interactive flow is pretty straightforward to use from iOS, using a custom scheme URL for the callback (trying to use a library is possibly making it harder than it actually is). The web based flow is important for users that are configured for alternative authentication flows (e.g. SAML based SSO), which won't work over the username/password flow.
There should be a video online somewhere of the REST & OAuth session from dreamforce'10, where the security PM wrote an iPhone oAuth client based app on stage.
It depends on your goal. One reason for using oauth2 is you want better insight into what is is running. Lets say for example you have many cron API applications all connecting to the same site. In that case, since they are cron applications, you don't even necessarily have a web browser running on your cron servers. You could of course just configure username and password, but then if you have a password reset you have to update all your cron servers, and you don't even necessarily know how many servers that is. Especially if they are coming through a NAT.
In this type of scenario, a very workable solution is to use a visual force page on salesforce as the callback URL. The administrator can login salesforce and then use the visual force page to generate a refresh token, they then hand off for use with the cron job.
You know have oauth 2 in your auditing stage. The token you have handed out, can be restricted to API. And hopefully if salesforce has don't oauth 2 correctly, you can reset the password on the user login as often as need be, without effecting the tokens you have handed out.
Bill
There is one more approach to this. You can visit my site for the approach.
Related
I am using django allauth in a variety of application that i make and its awesome!
Right now, I am trying to develop a login process in two separate steps.
I have a client(mobile) social login with some provider(twitter, Facebook) and the client takes the oauth credentials and sends them back to the server.
That means, that i do not need to use the forms and the templates provided, since all that are handled just fine by the client already.
What i need, is to know what functions/views i need to call in order to avoid all the functions that need the request to work properly.
I hope that i explained in detail my issue.
Thank you in advance,
Michael.
I'm currently trying to setup FOSOAuthServerBundle with my Symfony2 app.
Everything seems to be setup and functional, anyway I'm stuck after the installation.
What is the proper workflow with URLs to get the access_token ?
I tried /oauth/v2/auth, but sounds like I need to define a Client object first.
How to create/generate Client ? Clients are always supposed to be created manually ?
FOSOAuthServerBundle doc is great, but seems to skip all the usage workflow. Am I supposed to check the OAuth2 doc for this ?
Thanks !
In short, yes. You should be using the oAuth2 RFC to determine which workflow you want to use. In regards to client registration the RFC specifically states that the means through which a client registers is beyond the scope of the specification (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749#section-2).
With that being said I can give you some insight into how I did this. My application is a mobile phone application that connects to several services running on various servers. I'm also using the Resource Owner Password Credentials Grant.
The way I approached this was: when the application loads, the first thing it does is to check if it has an oAuth2 client id. If it doesn't, then it POSTS to a create client endpoint I've setted up with the meta-data I need. The endpoint validates the POST, creates the client and returns the client information. The application stores the client id and the process doesn't have to be repeated the next time.
Application loads;
Application checks for oAuth2 client id;
If there is one, the process ends;
If there isn't, it posts to http://www.example.com/client;
If we get a 200, store the oAuth2 client id.
I could have also created the oAuth2 client when the user created an account in the application, but I wanted to make the registration process as fast as possible. Creating the client would have added some extra waiting time to the process.
Check this: http://blog.logicexception.com/2012/04/securing-syfmony2-rest-service-wiith.html
It's quite simple to convert to Doctrine, whether you use it.
There's a command-line that does exactly what you need: create a Client!
Time ago it was easy to make a distinction between desktop and web applications, but today while reading while the documentation I've noticed that this difference is less pronounced.
I'm using the Facebook::Graph module to create a desktop application, but still can not go beyond the stage of configuration. I'm stuck at authentication phase:
my $ q = Plack::Request->new($env);
$fb->request_access_token($q->query_param('code'));
(http://metacpan.org/pod/Facebook::Graph)
It keeps telling me "$ env is required".
Reading the documentation I've realized that Plack is only concerned with web applications.
(http://metacpan.org/pod/Plack::Request)
Can you confirm this? If not, how do I get past this step?
It would not be a problem getting the access_token using Mechanize and then making a GET request as described in the documentation, but I do not want to complicate my existence, so if there are other ways...
A bit late, but there's a workaround.
To get an access token, take a look here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/howtos/login/login-for-desktop/
Just create a client with Mechanize or whatever you want and login with the desidered credentials
Perform the request as described
Move on from the authorization page
Parse the response and get the token
$fb->access_token($token);
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/application/ says:
Note: Applications that are configured as Native/Desktop apps will not be able to make API calls that require an application access_token.
So it's not a Plack, it's Facebook who requires your app to be web.
But if you may avoid access_token request, it might work.
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.
I'm developing a small CMS in PHP and we're putting on social integration.
The content is changed by a single administrator who as right for publishing news, events and so on...
I'd to add this feature, when the admin publishes something it's already posted on facebook wall. I'm not very familiar with facebook php SDK, and i'm a little bit confused about it.
If (make it an example) 10 different sites are using my CMS, do I have to create 10 different facebook application? (let's assume the 10 websites are all in different domains and servers)
2nd, is there a way for authenticating with just PHP (something like sending username&password directly) so that the user does not need to be logged on facebook?
thanks
You might want to break up your question in to smaller understandable units. Its very difficult to understand what you are driving at.
My understanding of your problem could be minimal, but here goes...
1_ No you do not create 10 different facebook application. Create a single facebook application and make it a service entry point. So that all your cms sites could talk to this one site to interact with facebook. ( A REST service layer).
2_ Facebook api does not support username and password authentication. They only support oauth2.0. Although Oauth is not trivial, but since they have provided library for that, implementing authentication is pretty trivial.
Please read up on http://developers.facebook.com/docs/.
Its really easy and straight forward and well explained.
Your question is so vague and extensive that it cannot be answered well here.
If you experience any specific implementation problems, this is the right place.
However to answer atleast a part of your question:
The most powerful tool when working with facebook applications is the Graph API.
Its principle is very simple. You can do almonst any action on behalf of any user or application. You have to generate a token first that identifies the user and the proper permissions. Those tokens can be made "permanent" so you can do background tasks. Usually they are only active a very short time so you can perform actions while interacting with the user. The process of generating tokens involves the user so that he/she has to confirm the privileges you are asking for.
For websites that publish something automatically you would probably generate a permanent token one time that is active as long as you remove the app in your privacy settings.
Basically yuo can work with any application on any website. There is no limitation. However there are two ways of generating tokens. One involves on an additional request and one is done client side, which is bound to one domain oyu specifiedin your apps settings.
Addendum:
#ArtoAle
you are right about every app beeing assighend to exactly one domain. however once you obtained a valid token it doesnt matter from where or who you use it within the graph api.
let me expalin this a little bit:
it would make no sense since it is you doing the request. there is no such thing as "where the request is coming from". of course there is the "referer" header information, but it can be freely specified and is not used in any context of this.
the domain you enter in your apps settings only restricts where facebook redirects the user to.
why?
this ensures that some bad guy cannot set up a website on any domain and let the user authorize an app and get an access token with YOUR application.
so this setting ensures that the user and the access token are redirected back to YOUR site and not to another bad site.
but there is an alternative. if you use the control flow for desktop applications you don't get an access token right after the user has been redirected back. you get a temporary SESSION-TOKEN that you can EXCCHANGE for an access token. this exchange is done server side over the REST api and requires your application secret. So at this point it is ensured that it is YOU who gets the token.
This method can be done on any domain or in case of desktop applications on no domain at all.
This is a quote from the faceboo docs:
To convert sessions, send a POST
request to
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
with a comma-separated list of
sessions you want to convert:
curl client_id=your_app_id \
-F client_secret=your_app_secret \
-F sessions=2.DbavCpzL6Yc_XGEI0Ip9GA__.3600.1271649600-12345,2.aBdC...
\
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/exchange_sessions
The response from the request is a
JSON array of OAuth access tokens in
the same order as the sessions given:
[ {
"access_token": "...",
"expires": 1271649600, }, ... ]
However you don't need this method as its a bit more complex. For your use case i would suggest using a central point of authorization.
So you would specify your ONE domain as a redirect url. This domain is than SHARED between your websites. there you can obtain the fully valid access token and seamlessly redirect the user back to your specific project website and pass along the access token.
This way you can use the traditional easy authentication flow that is probably also more future proof.
The fact remains. Once the access token is generated you can perform any action from any domain, there is no difference as ther is literally no "domain" where the request is coming from (see above).
apart from that, if you want some nice javascript features to work - like the comments box or like button, you need to setup up open graph tags correctly.
if you have some implementation problems or as you said "domain errors" please describe them more clearly, include the steps you made and if possible an error message.