From an app, POST data to the default iOS browser - ios

I have an iOS app, with a long list of items to be POSTed to a remote web server. The list can be long enough to exceed recommended lengths for a GET request. After the list is posted, the user can log into their account and manipulate the list.
Ideally, I'd like to POST the list to Safari (or another default browser) so that if the user already has logged in, they don't need to do so again and they have access to all the normal web browser functionality.
It seems to work with a UIWebView, but isn't the best interface.
This can be done on Android or the UIWebView using this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9909613

Do it in two steps:
POST the data to the server "anonymously". The server would assign some kind of unique id, and store the received data somewhere (database, temp file...), associated with the ID. Send back the ID to the client.
Alternatively, the ID might be provided by the client directly. For that, make sure it's some kind of UUID/GUID so you don't have conflicts.
Open a second URL (either in Safari or, probably better, in an SFSafariViewController) pointing to the login process along with the ID from step 1.
The server can then use the ID to locate the data posted during the first step.

Related

Typo3: FE Login with POST Request to external app server

I recently started getting into Typo3 but now I have to implement something for work and I have no clue where to start.
The requirements:
I have to add a separate page that can only be accessed by frontend
users. (so far no problem)
These frontend users should be able to login with the same password
as they got for their iOS app. (uh-oh)
The separate page should display data from the app. (less of an uh-oh
but connected to the previous point)
After talking to the developer of the app, he made a specific POST request that can be used for the webpage. I am also getting a json-file with the required data that I need to display upon successful login.
My question lies with the login. How do I go about implementing this? I use the extension felogin to provide the login form on the page.
The POST request is looking sort of like this:
https://domain.at/api/queryMediaItems. It needs user and password, declared as user and pwd. In the body there should be a json object with the language, e.g.:
{"language":"de-at"}
You need to implement a SSO (SingleSignOn) as your users need to identify against the iOS-app.
This might give you a concept.
You also can look inside the code of some extension

Console application using the YouTube Data API

I'm about to build a console application that needs access to the authenticated YouTube Data API. Calling the API's themselves is not a problem, I know quite well how to make and process HTTPS requests.
I've already gotten the API key and the Client ID. No problems there, either.
The problem is the authentication.
I've checked here: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/guides/authentication#installed-apps
On the "Installed applications" tab, in step two, it instructs on how to set up a url to call to do the authentication step. All good so far. But before programming anything, I thought I'd try and see what that url does in the browser.
Turns out it just displays a login prompt. Well how about that. That won't work in this kind of console application. The idea is, presumably, that the user is somehow shown this webpage and be instructed to login and allow access. Then, somehow, by some kind of magic perhaps, the access token is sent back to my console application.
Two things I'm not quite sure about:
1) How do I prompt for the username and/or password in the console app and send that to the authentication URL?
2) How would I get the access token back from it?
The biggest problem is that the API seems to require a browser... Which isn't there. My console application will (eventually) run unattended, so starting up a browser and displaying a webpage and doing nothing until it returns a code, is out of the question. I need to somehow supply the authentication page a username/password and get back the code right away.

Protect server URL in mobile app

I know this can sound absolutely stupid, but I could not find any way to solve this problem.
Say I've a mobile app: from this app, after purchasing an item, since the item is downloadable from a server, I make the user download a file to his device. Problem is it looks like it is very easy even for not so smart people, to get the URL of the file, so, without purchasing anything, the not-so-smart-guy can eventually download the same file for free (using a common browser).
Apart from the language I use (it is not important here, it can be JavaScript, Java, Objective-C, whatever), how can I prevent this issue WITHOUT developing an authentication system?
Generate a token for successful purchase, store it in the server side session or database. Add the token as a query string parameter for the file download request. Implement an filter for the file download request to validate the token.
To make sure that the URL is not share able - find some unique attribute of the device that can't be spoofed easily, hash(url,token,unique property) and add it to the url.

"Remember this approval" when using dotNetOpenAuth and Google Apps doesn't work as expected

I'm using dotNetOpenAuth to provide SSO to my app via a user's Google Apps account. Besides just simple authentication I also ask Google to return the user's email, first name and last name. When a user first goes in they get redirected to the typical Google Accounts page telling them that the app is asking for this info and do they want to allow it. There is the checkbox there to Remember This Approval. The problem is, the approval isn't being remembered. It does remember them if they go back to the site without closing their browser. But if they close their browser and then open it later and go back in, they are again prompted to allow it.
If I look through my Google account page that shows me connected sites, apps, and services, I see my app listed multiple times. It's like it doesn't recognize that it's the same app and keeps adding it.
I know I must be missing something obvious, but I'm not sure what it is. Any ideas?
Thanks!
You can find my code here
I see several problems in your code. To first answer your direct question, the reason Google doesn't remember you on return visits is because you are passing a random GUID in as part of your Realm each time you log in. The symptom is actually much worse than you realize. It's not just that Google prompts the user on return visits, your site won't recognize the user at all on return visits because Google will give them a new claimed identifier on each visit.
The fix is that you should use the exact same Realm for every login request:
Realm realm = "http://www.yoursite.com/";
var req = openid.CreateRequest(discoveryUri, realm, URIbuilder.Uri );
Or my personal favorite:
var req = openid.CreateRequest(discoveryUri, Realm.AutoDetect, URIbuilder.Uri );
Realm.AutoDetect will work for you unless your site is available both via HTTP and HTTPS, in which case you need to lock it down to just one or the other of these so that Google recognizes your site as always the same.
You must also remember that the returnTo URL that you pass in as the 3rd parameter to CreateRequest must always be based on the realm. So if your realm is HTTPS, so must your returnTo parameter be.
I also want to call out that you seem to have some GUID code and complex URL manipulation around trying to ensure that every OpenID response you accept comes from a request you sent out. I'm not sure why you're trying to do this in the first place, although there certainly can be legitimate reasons. The way you did it is insecure and can be circumvented. I suggest you delete all this code, in favor of adding this to your web.config file:
<dotNetOpenAuth>
<openid>
<relyingParty>
<security rejectUnsolicitedAssertions="true" />
</relyingParty>
</openid>
</dotNetOpenAuth>
The library has support for requiring all responses to come from your requests built in, and it does so securely so that the security exploit I alluded to earlier isn't possible.
But if you're only trying to apply this restriction so that you know it's coming from Google, may I recommend that instead of rejecting unsolicited assertions, you instead check the IAuthenticationResponse.Provider.Uri property when you receive responses and verify that it is coming from the Google OP Endpoint? Then, if Google ever supported sending unsolicited assertions it would work on your site, and ultimately your security gate is exactly where you intended it to be anyway.

How to test the twitter API locally?

I'm trying to write a web application that would use Twitter via OAuth.
I run my local server as 'localhost', so I need the callback URL to be something like http://localhost/something/twitter.do but Twitter doesn't like that: Not a valid URL format
I'm probably going to do a lot of tests, but once I've approved my app with my username, I can't test again can I? Am I supposed to create multiple twitter accounts? Or can you remove an app and do it again?
You can use 127.0.0.1 instead of localhost.
You can authorize your app as many times as you like from the same twitter account without the necessity to revoke it. However, the authenticate action will only prompt for Allow/Deny once and all subsequent authenticate requests will just pass through until you revoke the privilege.
Twitter's "rate limiting" for API GET calls is based on IP address of the caller. So, you can test your app from your server, using the same IP address, and get (once approved) 15,000 API calls per hour. That means you can pound on your app with many different usernames, as long as your approved IP address remains the same.
When you send the e-mail to Twitter to ask for an increase to your rate limit, you can also ask for the increase to apply to your Twitter username too.
I believe Twitter requires you - if you need to change your IP address, or change the username that is using the app - to send in another request asking for the rate limit increase for that new IP address or username. But, in my experience, Twitter has been pretty quick at turning around these requests (maybe less than 48 hours?).
use like this
for Website :http://127.0.0.1
and for callback URL: http://127.0.0.1/home
or any of your page address like http://127.0.0.1/index
Have you tried creating your own caching mechanism? You can take the result of an initial query, cache it on thread local, and given an expiration time, refresh from Twitter. This would allow you to test your app against Twitter data without incurring call penalties.
There is also another solution (a workaround, rather) which requires you to edit your hosts file.
Here is how you do it on a linux box:
Open your /etc/hosts file as root. To do this, you can open a terminal and type something like sudo vi /etc/hosts.
Pick a non-existent domain to use as your local address, and add it to your hosts file. For example, you will need to add something similar to the following at the end.
127.0.0.1 localhost.cep # this domain name was accepted.
So, that's pretty much it. Pointing your browser to localhost.cep will now take you to your local server. Hope that helped :)
In answer to (1), see this thread, in particular episod's replies: https://dev.twitter.com/discussions/5749
It doesn't matter what callback URL you put in your app's management page on dev.twitter.com (as long as you don't use localhost). You provide the 'real' callback URL as part of your request for an OAuth token.
1.) Don't use localhost. That's not helpful. Why not stand up another server instance or get a testing vm slice from slicehost?
2.) You probably want a bunch of different user accounts and a couple different OAuth key/secret credentials for testing.
You were on the right track though: DO test revoking the app's credentials via your twitter account's connections setting. That should happen gracefully. You might want to store a status value alongside the access token information, so you can mark tokens as revoked.

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