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Hey guys and gals! In this tutorial, we're going to get serious with OAuth by building an app with some complex and real-life features, like Facebook authentication, dealing with refresh tokens and more. We'll need about 8 steps to turn a barebones starting app into a complex, OAuth machine:
As we go through these, we'll give you any theory and background you need.
For now, you just need to understand that OAuth is an Authorization Framework. In human-speak, it means that it defines the different ways two parties, like your cool web site and a user on your website, can exchange tokens securely. Each of these ways is known as a grant type and though they look different, each grant type will always deliver an access token.
So what's this token? It's just a unique string tied to my account that gives
you access to make API requests on my behalf. It's like a username and
password all rolled into one. For example, if
ABCD1234 is a valid token
to my Facebook account, then an HTTP request that looks like this would post
to my timeline:
POST /weaverryan/feed HTTP/1.1 Host: graph.facebook.com Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Content-Length: length access_token=ABCD1234&message=Hello
Exactly how you pass the access token in an API request is different between Facebook, Twitter, or any other API. But it's always there.
I could just give you my username and password, but a token is much better. If I give 10 apps access to my account, each app will have its own token, which means I can revoke access to some apps, but not others.
Tokens can have a limited scope, which is huge. Unlike a password which gives you access to do anything on my account, I can give you a token that lets you view my Facebook friends, but not post to my wall.
So OAuth is really just a big set of rules that describe how two parties can exchange tokens. If I create a website where I want to access my users' Facebook friends, exactly how does a user give me an access token?
Let's answer that question, along with the thrilling topic of token expiration, the hopeful story of refresh tokens, the inspirational tale of single-sign on and all kinds of other things.
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