WebServices / API

Presentation

WebServices and API are mostly requested by an application, and not the end-user itself. In this case, you can not rely on LL::NG standard Handler to protect the webservice, as it will expect a cookie, which is not defined in the application requesting the service.

LL::NG offers several solutions to protect this kind of service.

ServiceToken Handler

Two Handlers will be used:

  • The frontal Handler that will protect the web application, and will forge a specific token

  • The backend Handler that will protect the web service, and will consume the token

See ServiceToken Handler documentation.

OAuth2 endpoints

We suppose here that LL::NG is acting as OpenID Connect provider. The web application will then be able to get an access token from LL::NG. This token could be sent to the webservice that can then validate it against LL::NG OAuth2 endpoints.

UserInfo

You can use the UserInfo endpoint, which requires the Access Token to provide user attributes.

For example:

curl \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer a74d504ec9e784785e70a1da2b95d1d2" \
  https://auth.example.com/oauth2/userinfo | json_pp
{
   "family_name" : "OUDOT",
   "name" : "Clément OUDOT",
   "email" : "clement@example.com",
   "sub" : "coudot"
}

Introspection

Introspection endpoint is defined in RFC 7662. It requires an authentication (same as the authentication for the tokens endpoint) and consumes an Access Token as parameter.

For example:

curl \
  -H "Authorization: Basic bGVtb25sZGFwOnNlY3JldA==" \
  -X POST -d "token=a74d504ec9e784785e70a1da2b95d1d2" \
  https://auth.example.com/oauth2/introspect | json_pp
{
   "client_id" : "lemonldap",
   "sub" : "coudot",
   "exp" : 1572446485,
   "active" : true,
   "scope" : "openid profile address email phone"
}

OAuth2 Handler

We also suppose here that LL::NG is acting as OpenID Connect provider. But the webservice will be protected by the OAuth2 Handler and will just have to read the HTTP headers to know which user is connected.

curl \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer a74d504ec9e784785e70a1da2b95d1d2" \
   https://oauth2.example.com/rest/myapi
{
   "check" : "true",
   "user" : "coudot"
}

See OAuth2 Handler documentation.