Introduction to authentication techniques
Getting data from different APIs requires a good understanding of the data structure and authentication techniques that allow external users to access the resources served by an API. Historically, there were multiple ways of accessing API resources, but nowadays there is one common protocol used by all the main social media networks. When you get into the developer documentation you will most probably encounter the problem of authentication referred to by an enigmatic term, OAuth.
What is OAuth?
OAuth is simply an authorization protocol that allows users to share data with an application without sharing the password. It is a way to obtain a secure authorization scheme based on a token-based authorization mechanism. There are two API authentication models using OAuth:
- User authentication
- Application authentication
User authentication
This is the most common form of resource authentication implementation. The signed request both identifies an application...
