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APIs - Overview

Administrators can use REST APIs in MWARE IAM to manage their organizations and application users can use these APIs to manage their logins and profiles.

Info

Two OSGi services provide authentication and authorization services for REST APIs based on their handlers.

You can write your handlers for authentication and authorization and register them in OSGI. For more information, refer to Write a Custom Local Authenticator.

Get access to APIs

At least one authentication element should be sent in an API invocation request to invoke the API successfully. If you fail to add the authentication element, the API request will return a 401 unauthorized HTTP response.

MWARE IAM supports the following API authentication methods:

Basic authentication

This authentication method uses the user's credentials to invoke the APIs. If the API you wish to invoke has Basic authentication as the authentication requirement, use the following request format to access the API.

Access the API

This is a sample cURL command template for the request.

curl -X GET "https://localhost:9443/t/carbon.super/api/server/v1/applications?limit=30&offset=0" -H "accept: application/json" -H "Authorization: Basic <Base64(username:password)>"

OAuth-based authentication

This authentication method requires users to obtain an OAuth2 token and then use it to invoke the APIs. If the API you wish to invoke has Password, Client-credentials, or AuthorizationCode as the authentication requirement, use the following request format to obtain a bearer token.

Before you begin

  • You need to create an application with Management Application enabled.
  • Expand the relevant API definition on the docs and obtain the scope required to invoke the API.

Abstract

Request

curl https://localhost:9443/oauth2/token -k -H "Authorization: Basic Base64 (<clientid>:<client-secret>)" -d "grant_type=password&username=<username>&password=<password>&scope=<scope>"
Sample request
curl https://localhost:9443/oauth2/token -k -H "Authorization: Basic d21VRm5oY2xlWFJNSFFZb29iUkx5VGY0TUxFYTowc0doU0dOOG4zMXJFQnpSRjkyYlN1dG5IRUFh" -d "grant_type=password&username=admin&password=admin&scope=internal_login"
Sample response
{
    "access_token":"846575e6-52b9-346d-95a5-cb0ff22d009f",
    "refresh_token":"9466cd69-4f9c-3675-861f-188a95bb60d3","scope":"internal_login","token_type":"Bearer",
    "expires_in":3600
}

The variables used in the cURL request are as follows:

Variable Description Sample value
clientid Client ID of your application. This is generated when registering the service provider on IS. wmUFnhcleXRMHQYoobRLyTf4MLEa
clientsecret Client secret of your application. This is generated when registering the service provider on IS. 0sGhSGN8n31rEBzRF92bSutnHEAa
Base64 (<clientid>:<client-secret>) The base64 encoded value of clientid:clientsecret. d21VRm5oY2xlWFJNSFFZb29iUkx5VGY0TUxFYTowc0doU0dOOG4zMXJFQnpSRjkyYlN1dG5IRUFh
username Username of the user trying to invoke the API. alex
password Password of the user trying to invoke the API. alex@123
scope The scope corresponding to the API you want to use. See the relevant API reference docs for each API's list of internal scopes. internal_login

Access the API

You can now use the access token as an Authorization Bearer header to access the APIs.

This is a sample cURL command template for the request.

curl -X GET "https://localhost:9443/t/carbon.super/api/users/v1/me/sessions" -H "accept: application/json” -H Authorization: Bearer <access_token>"

Certificate-based authentication

This authentication method uses mutual SSL to authenticate users and invoke the APIs.

If you opt for mutual SSL for API authentication, configuring intermediate certificate validation enables you only to use certificates that are signed by a defined list of issuers.

Add the following configuration to the deployment.toml file to enable this feature.

Abstract

Config

[intermediate_cert_validation]
enable=true
cert_cns=["cert_CN_list"]
exempt_contexts=["endpoint_list"]


Sample

[intermediate_cert_validation]
enable=true
cert_cns=["wso2is.org"]
exempt_contexts=["dcr","scim2"]

Parameter Purpose
enable Defines whether intermediate certificate validation is enabled or not.
cert_cns Specifies the context paths of the intermediate certificates. Multiple context paths can be defined for multiple certificates as follows. cert_cns=["wso2is.org","abc.com"]
exempt_contexts Specifies the context paths that need to be exempted from intermediate certificate validation. Multiple context paths can be defined as follows. exempt_contexts=["dcr","scim2"]

Info

When using intermediate certificate validation, note that the CN will be taken as the username instead of retrieving it from the header. Therefore, the incoming certificate request CN should ideally be the username of the user sending the request.

The certificate CN should be in the following formats for the following cases.

  • If the user is in the primary user store, the incoming cert CN should be <username>, e.g., john.
  • If the user is in a secondary user store, the incoming cert CN should be <userstore_domain>/<username>, e.g., SECONDARY/john.
  • If the user is not a super tenant and belongs to the primary user store, the incoming cert CN should be <username@tenant_doman>, e.g., john@abc.com.
  • If the user is not a super tenant and belongs to a secondary user store, the incoming cert CN should be <userstore_domain>/<username@tenant_doman> e.g., SECONDARY/john@abc.com.

Additional configurations

This section covers the additional configurations that admins can use when using APIS.

Secure resources

You can configure user role permissions to restrict access to resources. To do so, follow the guide below.

  1. Open the deployment.toml file found in the IS_HOME/repository/conf directory.

  2. In the [resource.access_control] section, specify the resource you want to secure along with the following parameters.

    Parameter Description Sample Value
    context The resource context that needs to be secured relative to the root context. /api/identity/*
    secured Enable or disable security in the given resource context. true
    http_method Specify an HTTP method i.e all, post, get, etc. all
    permissions The user role permission required to authorize the resource. You can enter multiple permission strings in a comma-separated list. /permission/admin/ login
    scope Scopes that an access token requires to access the resource. You can enter multiple scopes in a comma-separated list. internal_idp_create
    allowed_auth_handlers This parameter defines the handlers that need to be engaged for the particular resource. The default value all implies that all available handlers are engaged with the resource. BasicAuthentication

    Abstract

    Example

    [resource.access_control]
    context = "/api/identity/*"
    secured = true
    http_method = "all"
    permissions = ["p1","p2"]
    scope = ["scope1", "scope2"]
    allowed_auth_handlers = ["handler1", "handler2"]

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