Help Center/ Conversational Bot Service/ API Reference/ Calling APIs/ Authentication
Updated on 2023-06-06 GMT+08:00
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Authentication

Requests for calling an API can be authenticated using either of the following methods:

  • 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.

Token-based Authentication

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

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.

You can call a CBS API only after obtaining a token for authentication. To obtain a token, do the following:

Set the username (username), domain name (domainname), and login password (********).

POST https://iam.ap-southeast-1.myhuaweicloud.com/v3/auth/tokens 
Content-Type: application/json 
 
{ 
    "auth": { 
        "identity": { 
            "methods": [ 
                "password" 
            ], 
            "password": { 
                "user": { 
                    "name": "username", 
                    "password": "********", 
                    "domain": { 
                        "name": "domainname" 
                    } 
                } 
            } 
        }, 
        "scope": { 
            "project": { 
                "name": "ap-southeast-1" 
            } 
        } 
    } 
}

As shown in the following picture, x-subject-token in the response header is the desired user token. This token can then be used to call CBS APIs. For details about how to obtain a token, see Obtaining a User Token.

Figure 1 Header fields of the response to the request for obtaining a user token

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.

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 signature SDK, see API Request Signing Guide.

If no AK/SK has been generated, log in to , access the My Credentials page, and choose Access Keys > Create Access Key to obtain the access keys.

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

Parent topic: Calling APIs