Help Center/ Content Moderation/ API Reference/ Calling APIs/ Authentication
Updated on 2024-11-04 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

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

When calling the API to obtain a user token, you must set auth.scope in the request body to project.

For details about how to obtain username and domainname , see Obtaining the Account Name and Account ID. password indicates the user password.

{
    "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://iam.ap-southeast-1.myhuaweicloud.com/v3/auth/tokens
Content-Type: application/json 
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ....

AK/SK-based Authentication

AK/SK-based authentication and token-based authentication apply only to requests whose body size is less than 12 MB.

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

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

Parent topic: Calling APIs