Authentication

Token Authentication

The validity period of a token is 24 hours. If a token is used for authentication, cache it to prevent frequent API calls.

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

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

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

After obtaining the token, add the X-Auth-Token header in a request to specify the token when calling other APIs. For example, if the token is ABCDEFJ...., X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ.... can be added to the request header as follows:

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POST https://iam.ap-southeast-1.myhuaweicloud.com/v3/auth/projects

Content-Type: application/json
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ....

AK/SK Authentication

AK/SK authentication supports API requests with a body not larger than 12 MB. For API requests with a larger body, token authentication is recommended.

In AK/SK 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, which is 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 authentication, you can use an AK/SK to sign requests based on the signature algorithm or using the signing SDK. 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.