I'm a bit confused. I am trying to provide a simple Google Authentication sign-on.
I would like to use Google's recommended method using the client-side flow: https://developers.google.com/+/web/signin/add-button
If I use this method, how will I keep a user logged in as they move from page to page. I know I can't create PHP session via Javascript.
How can I use the client-side flow and keep a user signed in. I am using PHP on my server.
After spending a few weeks researching, I now understand that I cannot just set a php session variable and stop using oAuth2. I realize that everything I need to get information from Google, I must prove that I have still authenticated that user.
Also, I have come to understand that unless you force prompt, Google will not resend a refresh-token. To provide the best user experience, you must capture the token at first login and then re-use the token to make calls without having to force prompt. This token must be stored in a secured location such as a database for each user.
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I'm building a website using ruby on rails which is hosted separately which makes requests to another backend api rails app which is again hosted separately. Obviously i've setup the backend api with token based oauth authentication.
Now since im not dealing with sessions, and it being stateless n all, How can I stop users from accessing certain view pages in my front end web app? For example, I have a consumer/booking page. I don't want the user to access this page without being logged in. But anyone can just enter the url and open any page they want right now.
On user login (ajax call from .js.erb files), im getting the token and storing it in localStorage variable for every future request to the api. I know I should use this token somehow to stop users from access restricted pages. But I just dont know how.
Now as you have stored the token in the localStorage, you will need to pass this token with the request to the page where you want to restrict access and check if the user is authorized to access the page or not.
TL;DR: there is no standard method or library for this; you must implement such functionality as you see fit.
I'm assuming you're using some sort of front end framework like react; if so, then any request to change the current view should be terminated if there is no valid token in localStorage. Check out this post regarding conditional rendering in React; if you're using something else, the methodology is still pretty much the same.
Otherwise, I would build a small script to include in the beginning of every page that checks whether or not there is a valid token and if there isn't, calls window.history.back() to return the user to the previous page.
(Another way of doing it is to intercept every call to a static HTML file on the server, check if there's a token, and send the file if there is. Otherwise, you can send a custom error page or whatever).
I've been fumbling around with different client side technologies, like AngularJS, EmberJS, even trying to use straight JQuery and figure out how to use ReactJS with it. That aside, my goal is to build a single page app using json in between the client and a Java Jersey 2 jax-rs back end api.
I have two stumbling blocks right now. Some info though..I am deploying my app as a WAR file in Jetty. My back end is java based. I am using only jquery in the client side as of now.
My main stumbling block is how to handle login, logout and session management. With an rest API and using ajax, I have login working, including it setting a cookie. My concern however is with a single page app, there is just the one index page, and if the user closes the browser, then reopens it to the index page while the cookie/session is still good, the user should be logged in, not see the outside (not logged in) page. I am unsure how to handle this, whether it be a jsp page, index.html with some templating library, etc. With JSP I can insert some scriplet code (against my better judgment). In the old days I'd include a header that would check for request.getSession().getAttribute("user") and if it was there..the user was logged in and using scriplet if() code I'd display a logged in header, instead of the non-logged in header. But I am in the belief there has got to be a better way to do this with todays client side JS frameworks.
The other stumbling block is the navigation and dynamic aspects. For example, when I was messing around with angular js, it was easy enough to use Welcome {{name}} and within the scope replace name with a json response value for the logged in user. In my current situation, I am not exactly sure how to best go about displaying dynamic bits like this with pure jquery other than using some sort of $("#elem-id").innerHtml="..." code within the response success method of an ajax call. As well, I am not quite sure how to handle navigation to different pages. My logged in site will have some drop down menus or links that will replace the content area with different varying amounts of content.
So first, what are some ways in a SPA to handle user sessions, in the case of a page reload, or close/crash browser restart.. to ensure the user is still logged in and direct them to the right page? Second, what sort of templating and routing/navigation options exist that don't require me to put a huge ton of code in my one index.jsp page?
Thank you.
If you're having a REST API as the back end, then you must have implemented oAuth as an authentication mechanism. That is, when your user logs in, using a username and a password, you exchange that data with an authentication token. This authentication token is sent your server with each and every API call and your backend validates this token before servicing the request. Clear so far?
What you could do is, when you obtain the access token, you can also obtain the access token expiration time from the server and store that data in your client side app. In localStorage maybe? And when your user closes the browser and reopens again, you can first check whether such access token is available (and not expired) before asking the user to log in. This should solve your first problem.
Secondly, if you're looking for a lightweight routing option, I recommend director.
I am building a similar application. OAuth is not mandatory. You can have normal sessions etc by hitting the jersey login endpoint and setting a session and a cookie "keepme" with the session if user wants to be persistently logged in. You can then have a jersey AuthFilter for example check if either there is a cookie with a valid session or an active session and keep the user logged in.
Your frontend application should have no say over this, just communicate with the server and if it doesn't get unauthorized access (from the AuthFilter) then continues otherwise it displays the login page.
I have a static website without any server side languages.
Is it possible to pass some custom values whenever a user tries to login then get the data back when the user successfully signed in and comes back to my website from facebook?
I've read about signed_request, but that requires PHP.
You're essentially asking if Facebook will store data for you.
Unfortunately, the answer is no. You need some kind of mechanism on your server that can match a Facebook user to the data you need stored.
You could use local storage, but that's obviously local to the browser and prone to tampering.
I wondered if there was a way to login to Facebook via the oAuth (get-request) instead of using the FB.login().
The reason I would complicate the login is because of the FB.logout() problem. It is too cocky to logout someone from Facebook, just because they want to logout from my site. On the other hand, deleting the user from my application*, will prompt them to accept my terms everytime, which also doesn't seem to be very pro.
What I was imaging was:
I get the information needed from the GET-call
I store the session-cookies
I delete them if the user wants to logout
Once I retrieve the userid + access_token, I can get all the other information by simply making the JSON calls (no?).
It also bugs me in general that facebook stores so many cookies (what are they doing?)..
I tried to search this, but no luck this far.
*as proposed in this topic by DMCS: Can't Logout of my Facebook OAuth Session without logging User Out of Facebook
You can use the server side flows which, but you will have to adhere to the same policy.
Either way, it sounds like you are using FB's session data to control the auth state, something which is a very bad idea - you should only use the data provided by Facebook as an initial claim, which you then convert into a local claim with corresponding auth tokens/session cookies etc.
I am creating a chrome extension, rather a chrome webapp. This application just contains the html, js, image and css files. The application connects to a server to fetch data. I chose to do this as it would reduce the amount of files downloaded by the user. Using Backbone.js I have an MVC architecture in my application. Thus the application just sends json.
Now having said this, I need a session management. I plan to use Google authentication as the organization has Google Apps. I need a method that once the user has logged in using google auth the server get the user name every time the application makes a request.
Is it a good idea to add the user name in request header, if possible. Or should I use cookies? Can any one tell me how I could go about using cookies in this case?
This might be a late response but I want to present a more elegant solution to you given that the user has cookies enabled in their browser.
First read my answer on another question.
Now that you can send cross origin xhr from your content scripts all you need to do is store all your authentication and session management at server only. That is right, you just need to display whether the user is logged in or not and a logout button at client based on server response.
Just follow these steps.
At client Whenever user accesses your chrome web app, blindly make XmlHttpRequests to your server without worrying about authentication, just keep a tab on response from server which I describe below.
At server whenever you receive a request check for valid sessions or session cookie. If session is valid send proper response, if not send error, 401 or any other response to communicate to your client that session is not valid. It is better if you send an error code like 401 since then you can put a generic script at client to inform them that they are not logged in.
At Client If response from server is proper, display it, else display login link to your website.
IMPORTANT: Display logout button if user is logged in.
Check out my implementation of this in my extension
For help using Google authentication in your app take a look at Google's OAuth tutorial which comes with all you need (took me no time to set it up using this).
As for session management. The implementation of OAuth used by Google stores the tokens in localStorage. Also, as briefly mentioned in the extensions overview we are expected to use localStorage to store data. Thus, I suggest you store the users name here as it will be accessible throughout the app's lifetime (until it is uninstalled). However, you may need to manage the name stored here and consider what should happen when users log in and out. That said; I'm not sure if sessionStorage would be a better option as I've never used it before, let alone in an extension.
Note
localStorage and its counterparts only store strings so I suggest using a wrapper which uses JSON to parse and stringify to get and set your values respectively.