Can anyone tell me how I could go about authenticating with the various OAuth login mechanisms on the internets (Twitter, Facebook) so that I can run scripts against these services.
As an example, right now when I use Facebook data I goto graph.facebook.com and copy paste the access key from the URL. Obviously this is a bad approach, it has sufficed for now, but is not really an option anymore :)
I've checked out the documentation on the facebook site in particular which requests that I use a callback urL and so on. I'd like to be able to make a call from a ruby script which requests the OAuth token instead.
Is this even possible?
P.s This would be using my own credentials.
Yes, it is possible. http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/ "Authenticating as an Application" section.
You can get the Access Token using a web redirection, and then store it to perform further offline operations. Some APIs need explicit user scope permission to do that.
Related
I work for a large company (50K+). Some orgs within the company use OKTA for auth on their servers.
I have a valid user login (via OKTA) for the servers, and can log in through a browser without any issues, but want to access this site programatically.
How can I log into these websites using my OKTA credentials?
I've found this doc: https://developer.okta.com/docs/reference/api/oidc/#authorize
that details how to use an OKTA endpoint, but it requires some info that I do not have. Namely, nonce, state, and client_id. I have no clue how to get this info.
I've found another endpoint that allows a similar login method, but only requires username and password (I forget the doc that referenced this):
https://<company>.okta.com/api/v1/authn
I am able to successfully authenticate with OKTA using this endpoint, and receive a session_token. Can I take this session_token and apply it to my arbitrary webpage somehow? I can not find any documentation that says so.
At first glance it appears that many of the API endpoints for OKTA require intimate knowledge of the hosted application (and/or are not meant to be accessed programmatically).
Is it possible to log into an arbitrary webpage that uses OKTA for authentication, with only knowledge that an end user would have (username/password/optional MFA)?
Hi not sure you found the answer yet. from your descriptions i think yours is web app, which is supposed to use authentication code flow. else, you can ask your web developers what authentication flow they use and follow the auth process accordingly.
you need to retrieve id token & access token for authentication.
there is a service where one can authorize using their Google account.
I need to automate the workflow with that service, so my software has to log-in with a given Google account.
But as I've never done that before I don't know where to start. Most related answers suggest to display the authorization page to the user letting them to enter their login/password of their Google account, but that's not the case since my software must be fully automated, plus it is being ran in terminal mode so no browser neither any human to enter anything should be involved.
I wonder if such automation could be possible and where should I start.
The standard way to authenticate a user with google is through a three-legged oauth authentication flow (in a browser). You can do this in go using the oauth2 or with a more comprehensive package like goth
The general flow is:
redirect user to a landing page on google's site where they are prompted to grant you access.
google will make a callback to your site with a special code.
you make another request to exchange that code for an access token and a refresh token.
Use access token to use google apis, and use refresh token to get a new access token anytime it expires.
It is more detailed than this, and there is a lot to get right to keep it secure, but that is the general idea.
Now, like you've said, your app is a command line thing, so it is hard to do that flow. Unfortunately, you may need to do that once, just to get a refresh token. Once you have that, you could give it to your application: myapp -google-token=FOOBAR123, and your app can exchange the referesh token for a valid access token.
Maybe this will help: https://github.com/burnash/gspread/wiki/How-to-get-OAuth-access-token-in-console%3F
I'm writing a web application that reads my personal calendar data, crunches stats, and then spits them out for the world to see. I don't need an authorization flow. Is it possible to leverage the Google APIs without going through a user sign-in flow? In other words, I want my personal Google account permanently and securely signed in to my server without the risk of my token invalidating or having to re-auth.
Right now I'm signing myself in with an offline token, then uploading the authorization file onto my server, basically spoofing the server that I already auth'd. Is there not a cleaner way?
I've spent hours reading through the API docs and Auth docs, but haven't found and answer. If there is a page I've missed, please point me to it!
PS. I'm using the Calendars API through Python/Flask on Heroku, but that shouldn't matter.
An alternative approach is using a service account while sharing your calendar with that service account. See https://developers.google.com/accounts/docs/OAuth2ServiceAccount
So, you want to be remembered.
If you want to dispose of any kind of authenticacion but yet the user needs to be recognized you should be using a cookie.
On the server side that cookie should be used to select the offline token.
Of course, without that cookie the user needs to be authenticated in any way. I would make them reauth by Google so you get a new offline token.
Hope that it helps.
I am building a WP7 Twitter client. The normal OAuth 1.0 flow involves obtaining a request token by navigating a web browser to https://api.twitter.com/1/oauth/authenticate with my app's consumer key; this page will show a login prompt and ask the user to authorize my app to perform actions on their behalf. Upon completion, this page will redirect to a callback URL supplied by my app, with the request token supplied as a parameter.
For web apps this makes sense. I don't understand how this is supposed to work for a standalone mobile/desktop app, though. The Twitter API documentation seems to imply that this should be a feasible option. They do offer an alternative xAuth mechanism that allows an app to gather username/password itself and then supply that directly to obtain an access token. The API documentation points out that this is an inferior option (as it requires the user to trust the app, not just Twitter, with their password), but I don't see how I have any reasonable alternative?
(there is also a PIN-based option, but that's a pretty burdensome solution for the user)
I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything obvious.
"For web apps this makes sense. I don't understand how this is
supposed to work for a standalone mobile/desktop app, though."
Just embed a web browser control in your app, and navigate to the twitter authentication page. Then detect the redirection to the callback url (using the Navigating event) and retrieve the parameter. Many twitter apps do that, it's basically the same as asking the user for the login and password, except that instead of your own controls you're displaying twitter's page.
Nope, you're correct. The option for a mobile/desktop application is either a pin-based option or to use xAuth. Once you have an xAuth application has an access token it is indistinguishable from OAuth (it only changes the authorisation workflow). One thing it does change, and this is very specific to Twitter, is that if you do use xAuth then your application will not be allowed to read or write Direct Messages. See Twitter's The Application Permission Model page for more information.
Our company has a web application that is only used internally by our employees. We also have Google Apps Premier Edition. We would like to make it so our employees can log into our private web application using the Google Apps account that they already have.
Requirements: We want to display our own login form. We don't want to pass the email/password in plain text through the internet.
Which authentication mechanism should we use to achieve this?
Note: our application is written in PHP using Zend Framework (if that matters).
I would look into some combination of OpenID and your domain users (i.e. only let those at domain.com can log in).
Google API
They also have libraries for PHP and other languages that you can leverage to make this happen.
EDIT:
Some more info
When it comes to integrate Google Apps and an internally used private system, we simply have two options.
Use Google as the authentication center. Modify the private system to authenticate at Google's server. We could use OpenID or AuthSub. Check http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OpenID.html and http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/AuthSub.html for more information.
Use the private system as the authentication center. In this case, we have to implement SAML protocol in the private server and configure Google Apps's SSO settings. Check http://code.google.com/googleapps/domain/sso/saml_reference_implementation.html for more information.
It is easier to accomplish SSO with the first method since there's already bunch of OpenID libraries out there. But, as you described in the requirements, you want to use your own login form. So I guess you have to go with the second method.
BTW, if your private system has to get or set information from Google, you may want to use OAuth for authorization. See http://code.google.com/apis/accounts/docs/OAuth.html for more information.
Use the ClientLogin API, it does exactly what you're after: allow you to verify username and password. (the link goes to provisioning API doco but that is not relevant here)
Pro's:
you get to use you own login form
Cons:
you don't get SSO with Google Apps, i.e. users already in Apps will be prompted to login again (you didn't mention that as a requirement, but it seems a reasonable thing to want)
Google won't like you (they're trying to discourage ProgrammaticLogin.
you will get occasional CAPTCHA tests you'll need to show your users.
OpenID specifically prevents you from displaying your own login page, so if that's a hard requirements, Programmatic Login is really your only choice.
Going the SSO route let's you do pretty much anything, but may be a bit of overkill to take on authentication for the whole domain to make one app authenticate in a nicer fashion? If you really want to go down this route, check out SimpleSAMLphp.