Reputation: 43153
I've got a rails app I want to start enabling some iOS integration with. I have a basic authentication system built mostly from scratch with a little help from Sorcery.
My understanding is there's basically two options for mobile integration: HTTP Basic Auth or Token Auth. From what I've been able to find so far it looks like Token Authentication is the preferred method.
I am not familiar with what token authentication is or how it is supposed to work, and I have not really been able to find any decent guides on this, except for a few tutorials on how to use the relevant module in the Devise library.
So, my question is, what is the basic theory of Token Authentication, and what would a from-scratch token auth system in rails look like? I understand that sharing the code for the entire system might be overkill for an SO answer, but I would be very grateful if anyone can help me understand a basic schematic of how such a system is supposed to work. I'd also happily accept links to any good existing materials on how to do this from scratch, as the main problem is I haven't been able to find anything like that.
Thanks!
Upvotes: 10
Views: 3131
Reputation: 1456
Devise and Authlogic have a nice Token Authentication solution. You can either use one of these gems or to implement your own check their source code for inspiration.
Below is my understanding of how token authentication works:
I hope this helps.
Upvotes: 10
Reputation: 7684
ember-auth has a nice tutorial for token authentication for rails with devise and ember. However, it could also be applied to sorcery or to a custom authentication system. I think this is the best approach to authentication for an ember.js App.
https://github.com/heartsentwined/ember-auth-rails-demo
Upvotes: 2
Reputation: 4922
I think there are three difficulties here.
So, Googling won't reveal good resources for this purpose. I know this field well, but it's difficult, especially due to reason 2.
In my understanding, "token" here work as an authenticated identity in the system, and provide bridge between authentication system and authorization system. But to understand this, you must understand overall system.
Let me provide few pointer with regard to authentication technique books and some papers here.
Hope this helps.
Upvotes: 3