Authentication

Token-based Authentication

The validity period of a token is 24 hours. When using a token for authentication, cache it to prevent frequently calling the IAM API used to obtain a user token.

A token specifies temporary permissions in a computer system. During API authentication using a token, the token is added to requests to get permissions for calling the API.

A token can be obtained by calling the API for obtaining a user token through password authentication. Calling an IAM API requires a global token, that is, to get a token by calling this API, set auth.scope to domain in the request body. In the following example, DomainName indicates the account name:

{
    "auth": {
        "identity": {
            "methods": [
                "password"
            ],
            "password": {
                "user": {
                    "domain": {
                        "name": "DomainName"
                    },
                    "name": "IAMUserName",
                    "password": "IAMUserPassWord"
                }
            }
        },
        "scope": {
            "domain": {
                "name": "DomainName"
            }
        }
    }
}

After a token is obtained, the X-Auth-Token header field must be added to requests to specify the token when calling other APIs. For example, if the token is ABCDEFG...., add X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFG.... to a request as follows:

GET https://iam.myhuaweicloud.eu/v3/auth/projects
Content-Type: application/json
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFG....

AK/SK-based Authentication

• AK/SK-based authentication supports API requests with a body not larger than 12 MB. For API requests with a larger body, token-based authentication is recommended.
• AK/SK-based authentication prevents API calling failures caused by invalid cached tokens.

In AK/SK-based authentication, AK/SK is used to sign requests and the signature is then added to the requests for authentication.

• AK: access key ID, which is a unique identifier used in conjunction with a secret access key to sign requests cryptographically.
• SK: secret access key used in conjunction with an AK to sign requests cryptographically. It identifies a request sender and prevents the request from being modified.

In AK/SK-based authentication, you can use an AK/SK to sign requests based on the signature algorithm or use the signing SDK to sign requests. For details about how to sign requests and use the signing SDK, see API Request Signing Guide.

The signing SDK is only used for signing requests and is different from the SDKs provided by services.