yii-apiauth HTTP Authentication for (REST) clients (Basic or Digest Authentication)

  1. Yii ApiAuth Extension
  2. Requirements
  3. Usage
  4. Resources
  5. Important Notes

Yii ApiAuth Extension

Authenticate a (REST) client through Http Authentication Methods like Http Digest or Http Basic (or implement your own authentication scheme)

Most webservers, like Apache or IIS support different types of HTTP authentication, but they can be difficult (if not impossible) to integrate with a custom user account source, especially one that is implemented in Yii. This extension uses only Yii, PHP and MySQL and should be easy to integrate in an existing Yii based Authorization scenario.

Even though this extension can be used for virtually any authentication scenario, it is mostly suitable for automation, for example in REST requests. Hence it's name apiAuth.

Yii comes with an extensive built in authorization scheme and many great extensions like Rights, Auth or yii-user that you can use alongside this extension. @see http://www.yiiframework.com/doc/guide/1.1/en/topics.auth

Key Features:

  • For server-to-server communication (REST API's)
  • Secure: supports Digest authentication (used by default) or Basic authentication, which is less secure, but can be very usefull (and mainly faster) when you're already protected by SSL.
  • Easy to implement: intuitive yii-like filters & rules for controllers
  • Focus only on authentication. Leave authorization to other (or already implemented) components/extensions

Requirements

  • Yii 1.1.12 or newer (at least 1.1.13 when supporting qop: auth-int, older versions might work, not tested)
  • PHP 5.3 or newer
  • A database system like MySQL (other database systems might work, not tested).

Usage

See the README on GitHub.

Resources

Important Notes

To quote section 4.14 from RFC 2617:

By modern cryptographic standards Digest Authentication is weak. But
for a large range of purposes it is valuable as a replacement for
Basic Authentication. It remedies some, but not all, weaknesses of
Basic Authentication. Its strength may vary depending on the
implementation.  In particular the structure of the nonce (which is
dependent on the server implementation) may affect the ease of
mounting a replay attack.  A range of server options is appropriate
since, for example, some implementations may be willing to accept the
server overhead of one-time nonces or digests to eliminate the
possibility of replay. Others may satisfied with a nonce like the one
recommended above restricted to a single IP address and a single ETag
or with a limited lifetime.
The bottom line is that *any* compliant implementation will be
relatively weak by cryptographic standards, but *any* compliant
implementation will be far superior to Basic Authentication.
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14 followers
626 downloads
Yii Version: 1.1
License: BSD-2-Clause
Category: Web Service
Developed by: Denit S.
Created on: Mar 28, 2013
Last updated: 11 years ago

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