Azure mobile app authentication back-end logic - javascript

When a user authenticates on my app (by Google plus) I want to create a row in a Users table by the server side. I would not know how to do.
I think there is a function that is called when a users is authenticated.
My app is a mobile app with JavaScript back-end (Node.js).

I don't know of a callback that happens on successful authentication, but an easier way to implement this would be to require authentication on all of your endpoints, and then add the user information to a table if it doesn't already exist.
See this article for information on how to get user details in your Node.js app: How to: Require Authentication for access to tables.

Related

Use separate server for centralized users database

I am using Meteor 1.10 + mongodb.
I have multiple mobile chat & information applications.
These mobile application are natively developed using Meteor DDP libraries.
But I have same users base for all the apps.
Now I want to create a separate meteor instance on separate individual server to keep the users base centralized.
I need suggestions that how can I acheive this architecture with meteor.
Keeping reactivity and performance in mind.
For a centralized user-base with full reactive functionality you need an Authorization Server which will be used by your apps (= Resource Servers) in order to allow an authenticated/authorized request. This is basically the OAuth2 3-tier workflow.
See:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6749
https://www.oauth.com/
Login Service
You will also have to write your own login handler (Meteor.loginWithMyCustomAuthServer) in order to avoid DDP.connect because you would then have to manage two userbases (one for the app itself and one for the Authorization Server) and this will get really messy.
This login handler is then retrieving the user account data after the Oauth2 authorization request has been successful, which will make the Authorization Server's userbase the single point of truth for any of your app that is registered (read on Oauth2 workflow about clientId and secret).
Subcribing to users
The Auth server is the single point of truth where you create, updat or delete your users there and on a successfull login your local app will always get the latest user data synced from this accounts Auth Server (this is how Meteor does it with loginWith<Service> too)
You then subscribe to your users to the app itself without any ddp remote connection. This of course works only if the user data you want to get is actually for online users.
If you want to subscribe for any user (where the data might have not been synced yet) you still need a remote subscription to a publication on the Authorizazion server.
Note, that in order to authenticate users with this remote subscription you need an authenticated DDP request (which is also backed by the packages below).
Implementation
Warning - the following is an implementation by myself. This is due to I have faced the same issue and found no other implementation before mine.
There is a full working Accounts server (but constantly work in progress)
https://github.com/leaonline/leaonline-accounts
it uses an Oauth2 nodejs implementation, which has been wrapped inside a Meteor package:
https://github.com/leaonline/oauth2-server
and the respective login handler has also been created:
https://github.com/leaonline/meteor-accounts-lea
So finally I got a work around. It might not be the perfect way to handle this, but to my knowledge it worked for me so well. But yes I still open for suggestions.
Currently I have 4 connecting applications which are dependent on same users base.
So I decided to build SSO (Centralized Server for managing Users Database)
All 4 connecting applications ping SSO for User-Authentication and getting users related data.
Now those 4 connecting applications are developed using Meteor.
Main challenge here was to make things Reactive/Realtime.
E.g Chat/Messaging, Group Creations, Showing users list & listeners for newly registered users.
So in this scenario users database was on other remote server (SSO), so on connecting application I couldn't just:
Meteor.publish("getUsers")
So on connecting applications I decided to create a Temporary Collection called:
UserReactiveCollection
With following structure:
UserReactiveCollection.{
_id: 1,
userId: '2',
createdAt: new Date()
}
And I published subscription:
Meteor.publish("subscribeNewUserSso", function () {
return UserReactiveCollection.find({});
});
So for updating UserReactiveCollection I exposed Rest Api's on each connecting application respectively.
Those apis receive data from SSO and updates in UserReactiveCollection.
So on SSO side when ever a new user is registered. I ping those Apis (on connecting applications) and send the inserted userId in the payload.
So now those connecting applications receives onDataChanged ping from the subscription and gets userId.
Using that userId the connecting applications pings back to SSO and get user details of that specific userId and prepends to the users list.
Thats how I got it all working so for now I am just marking my answer accepted but as I mentioned above that: "It might not be the perfect way to handle this, but to my knowledge it worked for me so well. But yes I still open for suggestions."
And special thanks to #Jankapunkt for helping me out.

Can Custom Authentication be made in Firebase

I am trying to use a 6 digit code to log-in a user.
The code is available for 20 seconds and is unique to every user.
Briefly explained:
User is already logged in on a mobile app
User press the button "Get Unique Code"
Then, user enter the code on a WebPage on his PC
If the code is correct, show data for that user
What am I asking is if there is way to properly authenticate the user who introduces that code correctly given that I have the userID and all the informations about the user?
I can try and "fake log-in" (display all the information for that user when the code is correct) but there are some issues with this and I would like to avoid it.
I am using Firebase Authentication and Firebase Firestore. JavaScript is used for Web.
You can implement any authentication scheme you want by creating a custom provider for Firebase Authentication.
See Authenticate with Firebase in JavaScript Using a Custom Authentication System and Creating Custom Tokens with the Admin SDK.
In this flow you:
Sign in the users yourself.
Create a custom token for those users in a trusted environment, such as a server you control, or Cloud Functions.
Pass that custom token to Firebase Authentication, which can then use it to identify the user, and secure access to Firestore, Storage, and Realtime Database.

Integrating Auth0 authentication with existing user database

I've a requirement to integrate Auth0 in our project (Reactjs/Hapijs/MySQL). I checked the documentation and they have many examples and that is great, however, I can't find any related to how exactly do I use my existing user database.
In my application I have users and those users can have one or more projects. With the authorization that we currently use, a user logs in, I check what projects does he own and send it to the React application.
I am missing a document that explains me how to use Auth0 and still be able to check in my database what projects user owns.
My idea on how that should work (I might be wrong):
User sends username and password to our server
Our server makes request to Auth0 (with provided credentials)
Auth0 replies back to our server with some token
We look in users table in our database and try to verify the existence of that user
If it is a match then we simply look (as we already do) for user projects.
Is this how it is supposed to work?
There are a few options available for scenarios where you want to integrate Auth0 with applications that already have existing user databases. You can either:
continue to use your existing store
progressively migrate your users from your custom store to the Auth0 store
You don't mention it explicitly, but judging from your expected flow it seems you would be wanting to implement the first option. There is specific documentation that you can follow that explain how you can setup your custom database connection, see Authenticate Users with Username and Password using a Custom Database. It mentions MySQL, but others database servers are supported and there are many templates that will allow you to quickly setup things.
When you complete this the final flow will be the following:
Using either Auth0 authentication libraries (Lock) or your custom UI you'll ask the user for their credentials
Either Lock or your custom UI submits the credentials to Auth0 authentication API
Auth0 authentication API validates the credentials by calling scripts that execute against your custom database (these scripts were provided by you when you configured the database connection)
If the credentials are valid the Authentication API will return a token to the calling application that will have user information and proves the users is who he say he is.
The scripts you need to provide are the following, but only one is mandatory:
Login script (executed each time a user attempts to login) (mandatory)
Create user script
Verify email script
Change password script
Delete user script
The optional scripts are only required when you want to provide the associated functionality through Auth0 libraries, if only need the login to work then you can skip them. The login script, in the case of a valid user, is also where you return the profile information of the user, for example, you could in theory include their owned projects in the user profile.

OAuth 2.0 Implicit Grant Type with AngularJS frontend

I'm currently building a frontend client for my own Apigility API.
The API uses OAuth 2.0 Authentication which is working fine.
I want to create an AngularJS Landingpage to let the users authenticate by entering their credentials. Because the Client is created with JavaScript,
I shouldn't save the client_secret in the Client, correct?
I have read a lot of posts, but still haven't the right solution.
Is it correct to use the implicit grant type for this scenario?
This procedure is working, I'm being redirected to the authentication server,
after the client authorization and entering credentials, I get back to the client (authenticated).
But I don't want to get redirected to another authentication page.
Is it also possible to authenticate directly and secure on the angularJS frontend?
Thanks,
Simon
You should take a look at this post i made:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/42443878/2963703
It details how to do this using the Spotify API. Your page won't get redirected, instead a popup window will open in which the user authorizes themselves. Once they're authorized the window will close itself and in your main page you will have the access token you need.

WCF Authentication for a Javascript (Sencha) web app

I work on a mobile web app in Javascript(Sencha)/HTML5 with WCF Rest services that needs to use authentication to authenticate users from a custom (MySQL) database in order to customize services responses during the user session.
I search about WCF authentication and founded so many ways that i'am really lost to find the best way to answer my constraints...
Can i really authenticate my user from the WCF web service (with his username and password) and then keep a token or a cookie or whatever that can be used in the following request in order to identify my user and make my response according to that user ?
Thanks in advance for your help !
Authentication as you many know can be done in many ways. Username/password, Certificate etc. It really depends upon your requirement.
For e.g.
If you have a mobile application which is dealing with financial information for a user (such as Bank account) then I would use both user credentials as well as X509Certificates.
If you have an application which is public facing then you can get away with using just certificates (Just client certi).
If you have a B2B application (which I would doubt in this case) then you can use Asymantic certificates (Client and server) in which you will create Both Client and Server certifcates (X509) and give to the client and let the client manually install it on their client devices.
For the simplest senario you can start by try using username and password. So your client app will user username/password to authenticate with a WCF Service at server.
Follwing my give you a good starting point
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733131.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/CustomUserNamePassAuth2.aspx

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