I'm facing the same problem. I used restserver in php.
Ofcourse the traffic goes over SSL connection.
When I would like to get information about certain user I must authenticate first to the rest server before I can get his info. I would like to know any better approaches?
Similar post: RESTful Authentication
Good resource is also OAuth2.
Also Google uses oauth:
OAuth 2.0 is a new, simplified authorization protocol for all Google APIs. OAuth 2.0 relies on SSL for security instead of requiring your application to do cryptographic signing directly. This protocol allows your application to request access to data associated with a user's Google Account.
When application uses this: http://restserver/user/login and let's say that the authentication went ok, the application itself creates session like this:
Rest client/Application
public function login() {
.... form_validation
// get restserver salt so we can send hashed password
$message = $this->rest->get('https://restserver/user/salt');
if($message['status_code'] !== '0')
exit;
$data = array(
'username' => $this->input->post('username'),
'password' => prepare_password_salt($this->input->post('password'), $message['salt'])
);
// authenticate with restserver, check if the user and password exist
$msg = $this->rest->post('https://restserver/user/login', $data);
if($msg['status_code'] === '0')
{
// make session
$session_data = array(
'logged_in' => true,
'username' => $data['username']
);
$this->session->set_userdata($session_data);
redirect(base_url() . 'some_page');
Rest Server
/**
* http://restserver/user POST
* - insert new user
*
* http://restserver/user/id PUT
* - update existing user
*
* http://restserver/user/login POST
* - check if username exists and the password match
*
* - return true on success login
* - return false on failure
*
* http://restserver/user/id/hashed_pass GET
* again client gets salt and then send hashed_pass
* - return array(
* 'username' ..
* 'email' ....
* .. other information
* );
* or we could use some access token but that means that the restserver
* must save token for each user for some time and then delete
*
* HTTP server Allowed methods: GET, POST, PUT
* HTTP server disallowed methods: DELETE
**/
class User extends Rest_Controller
{
public function __construct()
{
parent::__construct();
$this->load->library('form_validation');
}
/**
* Check username and password with database.
*
* @link /
* @param $_POST['username'] (string)
* @param $_POST['password'] (string - sha1(password . salt))
* @return array which contains
* array['status_code']
* array['status']
* status_code 0 means that login was successful
* status_code 1 means that username or password is incorrect
*/
public function login_post()
{
$this->load->model('User_Model', 'user_model');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('username', 'Username', 'trim|required|min_length[3]|max_length[64]');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('password', 'Password', 'trim|required|exact_length[40]');
if($this->form_validation->run() === true)
{
// check with the database
if($this->user_model->authenticate($this->input->post('username'), $this->input->post('password')))
{
// update user last_login field
$this->user_model->updateLogin($this->input->post('username'));
$message = array(
'status_code' => '0',
'status' => 'Login ok.'
);
}
else
{
$message = array(
'status_code' => '1',
'status' => 'Username or password is incorrect.'
);
}
}
$this->response($message, 200);
}
