Understanding the end-to-end process

The topics covered in this chapter are part of a larger process through which a user gains access to the features provided by an application. The process is as follows:

1. Enrolment. The enrolment process creates an account for the user, who is given credentials to identify themselves.
2. User Authentication. The user presents their credentials when they want to use the application. The authentication process, often called signing in, produces a token that temporarily identifies the user.
3. Request Authentication. When making HTTP requests, the client includes the temporary token to identify the user without needing to provide the credentials again.
4. Authorization. The token included in the request is used to determine whether the user can access the feature specified by the request.

This chapter covers the authentication and authorization parts of the process. The details of the enrolment process are not described...