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Citesphere uses OAuth2 for handling authentication and authorization. You can use any form of OAuth Client to get the token, which needs to be passed to other APIs as a header.

Using Citesphere to Authenticate Users for Single Sign-On

1. Authorizing Application

Prerequisites

  • You should have created an application in Citesphere. If not, create one! Make sure to choose “Apps need user information (Authorization Code)” as application type and to provide a url to which Citesphere should redirect after authorizing a user in “Redirect URL.”

  • You should have the following information for the application with you:

    • client_id - A unique identifier for your application. This is auto-generated for you during the application creation.

      • Example: OAUTHCLIENT007

    • client_secret - An auto-generated secret identifier which will be visible only right after you create the application. If you had lost it, go back and create a new applicationregenerate the secret.

    • redirect_url - You should have given a callback URL while creating the application in Citesphere. If you forgot this, you can check it back in Citesphere.

Authorization Flow

From your application, redirect your user to the following URL with specified parameters. Maybe have a button that says

Status
colourBlue
titleLogin Via CItesphere
which has the hyperlink.

...

Info

Note that this step happens in the browser, initiated by your application’s user. That means code and state are visible in the address bar.

Your application should have a controller in the backend to retrieve code and state from <your_app_redirect_url endpoint. That way, you can use code and state to get the access_token from your backend.

2. Get Access Token

Note

This step should NOT be done in the browser. Why? You have to pass your client_secret for getting the access_token.

At any cost, you should NOT expose your client_secret to your user.

...

  • expires_in specifies the number of seconds remaining for the access_token to expire.

  • You should use the access_token as the Bearer token header for accessing any resource.

    • Header Name - Authorization

    • Header Value - Bearer 2c7c0f10-adf5-ed55-a931-caeea29464ee

  • You should use the refresh_token in order to get a new access_token once it is expired

3. Refresh Token

You would need to call this API for getting a new access_token if it expired. Your application should ideally store the refresh_token generated previously (ex. database). Use the refresh_token to retrieve a new access_token.

...