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. Authentication using AK/SK is recommended because it is more secure than authentication using tokens.

Token Authentication

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

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

If you use a token for authentication, you must obtain the user's token and add X-Auth-Token to the request message header of the service API when making an API call.

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": "password",
                    "domain": {
                        "name": "domainname"
                    }
                }
            }
        },
        "scope": {
            "project": {
               "name": "xxxxxxxx"
             }
        }
    }
}

After a token is obtained, add 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...., add X-Auth-Token: ABCDEFJ.... in a request as follows:

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