Help Center/ Distributed Database Middleware/ API Reference/ Calling APIs/ Authentication
Updated on 2024-08-02 GMT+08:00
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Authentication

Requests for calling an API can be authenticated with 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. Authentication using AK/SK is recommended because it is more secure than authentication using tokens.

Token-based Authentication

The validity period of a token is 24 hours. If a token is required, the system caches the token to avoid frequent calling.

A token specifies temporary permissions in a computer system. Token-based authentication adds a token in a request as its header during API calling to obtain the permissions for operating APIs on IAM.

When calling an API to obtain a user token, you must 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" 
             } 
         } 
     } 
 }

In Making an API Request, the process of calling the API used to obtain a user token is described.

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 a request as follows:

1
2
 
Content-Type: application/json
X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ....

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 associated with a secret access key and is 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 or 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.

Parent topic: Calling APIs