CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsapiruby-on-rails-4authentication
Kathan
Kathan

Reputation: 1458

Rails Api Authentication vs User Authentication

I am using rails 4 and developing my first API. The API will be used solely for our android and ios apps to communicate with the rails app / database.

I am struggling to see the difference between API authentication and user authentication when it comes to an API. It seems people use these terms interchangeably.

I want my api to be secure, meaning only the apps can submit http requests, but I also want users to be able to log in. And when I say users, I mean app users... not outside clients who are accessing our api (we don't want this at all).

Would love if someone could clear this up for me. I may just not be thinking about it in the right way, therefore confusing myself.

So to break it down, these are the two things I need to be able to do:

  1. secure the api of course... making it so only the mobile apps can access it
  2. users are able to log in and access their profile, resources that belongs_to to them, etc. When users aren't logged in, they still need to be able to see the index and other pages that don't require a logged in user.

thx!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 72

Answers (1)

Mateus Luiz
Mateus Luiz

Reputation: 796

Have you heard of JWT? It's a good option to hadle users with the app and rails api separated.

Gem for jwt in rails: https://github.com/nsarno/knock

Upvotes: 1

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