Help Center/ Log Tank Service/ API Reference/ Calling APIs/ Authentication
Updated on 2022-09-28 GMT+08:00
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Authentication

You can use either of the following authentication methods when calling APIs:

  • Token-based authentication: Requests are authenticated using a token.
  • AK/SK-based authentication: Requests are authenticated by encrypting the request body using an AK/SK pair. AK/SK-based authentication is recommended because it is more secure than token-based 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 is used to acquire temporary permissions. During API authentication using a token, the token is added to requests to get permissions for calling the API.

You can obtain a token by calling the Obtaining User Token API. When you call the API, set auth.scope in the request body to project.

{
    "auth": {
        "identity": {
            "methods": [
                "password"
            ],
            "password": {
                "user": {
                    "name": "username",
                    "password": "********",
                    "domain": {
                        "name": "domainname"
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "scope": {
            "project": {
                "name": "xxxxxxxx"
            }
        }
    }
}

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 ABCDEFJ...., X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ.... can be added to a request as follows:

POST https://{{endpoint}}/v3/auth/projects
Content-Type: application/json
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ....

AK/SK-based Authentication

AK/SK-based authentication supports API requests with a body no larger than 12 MB. For API requests with a larger body, you should use token-based authentication.

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.

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

Parent topic: Calling APIs