I'm currently implementing an Oauth consumer service which is going to use Soundcloud as an Oauth service provider as well. But I'm having the following issue with it: Taking Facebook or Twitter example, you go there, you sign in, you fill up the permission form, and you are redirected back to your app. If you go there a second time, and given you are already sign in, you basically skip all steps and are redirected back instantly. That means, Facebook recognized that you already gave permission to that 3rd party service, so it doesn't ask your permission constantly.
And that's what's happening when I use Soundcloud. Basically everytime I redirected the user to the Soundcloud Oauth connect endpoint, the permission form always shows up, even though I already gave permission to that 3rd party service previously. I'm forced to press "connect" every single time, which is a drag from the user perspective (how many times can you give permission to the same entity). My question is: is there a parameter I can use to make soundcloud recognize/validate the previous permission from the user account to that specific 3rd party service? Or is this Soundcloud Oauth design implementation and we have to live with it?
Edit:
Maybe this wasn't clear, but each time I press "connect" in soundcloud, a new access token is being generated and delivered. Since my app uses this access token to identify its users, it doesn't work very well for me that the access token is getting updated everytime I want to log in, making me effectively "sign up" everytime. To sum it up, I want to get the previously attributed token to my account, so I can look up in my database, identify it and log him in.
I'm also looking for a solution which doesn't involve storing state in the client that might get cleaned up.
What you can do is store the user's oauth token in local storage and reuse it in future sessions. That's what happens on soundcloud.com.
A longer explanation:
When you use the Connect flow, the user is authenticated by SoundCloud (either by using username/password, Facebook Connect, or an already-existing session on soundcloud.com), and then when it is successful, your app is given an oauth token for that user. This is passed to the callback page which is registered for your app.
That token is the only piece of information needed to have the user be "logged in". Unless the token expires (by time, or by the user manually revoking it), then you can reuse that in future sessions.
I think I'm a bit confused about your application's design: where and how is the oauth token being used? I think that instead of using the token as an identifier, perhaps the user's permalink might be better? If you have the oauth token, you can find out the permalink by querying api.soundcloud.com/me.
Related
I'm writing an offline application that uses the Dropbox API. When a user comes to the application, I'm using the https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token (docs) to get a refresh_token, which I store for later use.
I am calling the same endpoint every time the user logs in (unless I've already got the user's data in a cookie). I'm not sure that this is the best way to go about it: I at least need to get the user's account_id, so that I can look up their refresh_token in the database if I already have it. But every time I call https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token, the user is redirected to the Dropbox app authorization interface, as if they've never approved the app before.
So I would either like to know how to stop Dropbox from forcing the user to re-authorize an app every time. Or, if that is just how https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token is supposed to work, I'd instead like to be able to get their account_id somehow when they visit my page.
(In case it's relevant, the app is still in development mode at this point.)
The https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token endpoint is an OAuth endpoint that the app can call to get an access token/refresh token. Being an API endpoint, it does not itself redirect the user to the Dropbox app authorization page.
The Dropbox app authorization page is at https://www.dropbox.com/oauth2/authorize (documented here), and the app decides if/when to direct the user there to authorize the app.
You generally only need to send the user through the app authorization flow (sending them to https://www.dropbox.com/oauth2/authorize and then calling https://api.dropbox.com/oauth2/token) once per user for an "offline" application. Once you do so, you should store the resulting refresh token for that user. You'll typically store the refresh token for that user tied to their user account in your own app.
Exactly how you manage the user accounts in your own app will depend on how it's built, but, as it sounds like this is a web app, typically you would use the user's browser cookies to identify the user when they return to your page so that you can look them up in your database and retrieve their details, such as their corresponding refresh token. (Or, if they're not already signed in to your web app, you would have them do so first.)
Greg's answer is very helpful, and very politely addresses my misunderstanding of the auth flow. (I was revisiting old code I'd written years previously—obviously I should have documented it better than I had!)
In the end I believe that Dropbox was forcing me to reauthorize because my application was in development mode, and had a small user base. When I used the identical code in an app set to production mode, it stopped forcing me to reauthorize. So the “problem” is really a Dropbox security feature, and the solution was just to use production mode.
*Apologies in advance for the long background but I think it is necessary and helpful to other devs once this is answered.
Background
I am building a very social web-application in which there are several events that trigger social actions such as updating the user's Twitter status.
Currently, I use a library called "TweetMoaSharp" (.NET) to handle the Oauth workflows and events that trigger a status update or follow action work brilliantly as long as the user is briefly redirected to the Twitter authentication page.
To clarify, the user is not asked to re-authorize my app each time, but there is an unsightly flicker that lasts for 1-2 seconds while the user is directed to Twitter and then back to my app. This will annoy the end user as there are frequent Twitter interactions.
So--to relieve the situation, I use TweetMoaSharp to obtain an OAuth Access Token via the server and then store that token along with the user id returned from Twitter in my database. I then set a cookie on the client that contains the user's Twitter Id so that for future requests I can simply pass that ID to the server, grab the OAuth token form the database and do my business. No redirect required!
Problem Solved, Right?
Well, no. Stupidly, I overlooked the fact that this can cause a collision with multiple Twitter Accounts being used on the same page and ended up tweeting test-tweets to a second twitter account I own because I had changed Twitter sessions. This could happen to any user(s) who access multiple Twitter accounts from the same browser; a husband and wife for example.
Back to the Drawing Board
I thought to myself, "The Facebook JavaScript API" makes it super easy to get the id of the currently logged in user without going through a bunch of server-side token steps so I am sure Twitter offers the same approach." Ha! I haven't found one yet.
Bottom Line / Question
How do I get the ID of the currently authenticated Twitter user without redirecting them to Twitter (even for just a second)? If I can do this, then I can compare the returned ID to the one in my cookie and know if it is valid for my application's current session or if I need to have that (new) user authenticate as well so that I avoid "Tweeting" under the wrong account.
Thanks in advance.
Use your app tokens to do a verify credentials call
https://api.twitter.com/1.1/account/verify_credentials.json
The returned info is the logged in user.
Unfortunately limited to 15 calls per 15 minute window!
I have a Google Apps Marketplace (v2) app I am working on setting up Oauth2 for.
I've got everything working, but for some reason when I do a redirect to the authentication page, after, after you select which Google account to use (if like you're me and are testing, you have to pick one of several Google accounts you're currently signed into), I get sent to another page which seems utterly pointless:
This is bizarre and annoying, because I am logging in as the domain administrator!
Does anyone know a way to skip this screen, or what I might be doing to be cursed with this terrible user experience?
I just confirmed that having access_type=offline will always display this page, even with approval_prompt=auto. You will always get back a refresh token as well.
The only way to hide it is to remove access_type=offline on future login requests (ask only on signup).
I believe this shows up only if app requests refresh token for offline access. Also this should only appear first time you access the app after installation.
In order to skip this you need to update app to not request refresh tokens.
I'm working on a cloud-storage API, authorized via OAuth. Users of third-party applications can permit said application to access their files/data via our RESTful API.
Currently, we are limiting a third-party app access to a users account once. E.g., the Access Token table has a UNIQUE on the consumer column and the user column. This makes sense at first glance, as the user should never be sent to our service to authorize a third-party application twice, since the third-party would already know their user is already tied to our service and wouldn't need to be re-authorized.
However, what if this user has two accounts on the third-party app, and they want said app to connect to their single account on our service twice? This seems likely, given the prevalence of multiple accounts on services such as Reddit.
Here are the possible solutions I've come up with so far, none of them being perfect:
Display an error during the second auth request: This seems like a frustrating experience for the user, a "cop out" of sorts.
Delete the previous token: This would likely annoy the user, as their previous accounts stop working. Even if we display a warning, it would likely be hard to explain what exactly is happening.
Return the same access token as the first request: Each time the access is requested, a set of permissions are also passed along. The permissions for the second request could be different than the permissions for the first request. Also, not sure if this will violate the OAuth spec, as the secondly generated Request Token isn't tied to the Access Token properly.
Allow two to be generated: This would be confusing, as when the user visits their screen full of authorized applications to revoke one, they don't know which authorization is tied to which third-party account. We could ask for an optional third-party username parameter when the Request Token is generated to identify the different auth's (we currently ask for a non-OAuth-standard permission parameter already). But, this seems like it wouldn't be used by 99% of developers and could make application development more confusing.
What is the best way to handle this situation? Is there a standardized practice for handling this use-case?
I think your last case is the right way to go - Allow two to be generated
When the user visits his screen full of authorized application, it's not necessary to show him one and the same Application twice - you just have to delete the tokens associated with the app if the user revokes application access. That is, all his authorizations to the app with all tokens will go away with the revoke, which is fine.
as I started to work with Twitterizer in order to publish on someone's wall I am in confusing time.
There is a page, my case, DefaultTwitter.aspx where is link to authenticate on twitter with token provided. Goes on Twitter and comes back to CallbackTwitter.aspx with outh_token and secret. And so the user is identified. On twitterizer example says:
Step 5 - Store the results
You should now store the access token and the user details. Keep in mind that the
only way an access token will become invalid is if the user revokes access by logging
into Twitter. Otherwise, those values will grant you access to that user's data
forever.
My questions are: - should I store any data in SQL datatable and what exactly(however I hope that is not the case to do so)
somebody said that I should save in a cookie(I thought in session); however then if another user comes then how should I create a button to logout or something like that?
-how will user revoke application access if he would like so?
A live example will be much appreciated as I could not found any on internet how exactly twitter api works.
When your application finishes getting authorization to access the user's data, the result is the access token (represented by 2 values, a key and a secret). Those values are, in effect, the username/password you can use in requests to the API on behalf of that user.* Save those values in your SQL database. You'll also be given the user id and screen name. It's probably a good idea to keep those handy, too.
The user can revoke access to an application by going to http://twitter.com/settings/applications, finding the application and clicking the revoke access button next to it. Your application cannot revoke access for the user.
You asked for an example, but you're citing the example application. Just look at the source code in that sample.
* - That's a simplification for explanation sake. Please don't crucify me, OAuth experts.