How to use Laravel Passport with Password Grant Tokens?

Question

I just read the https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/passport documentation and I have some doubts that hopefully someone could help me with:

First, some context, I want to use Passport as a way to provide Oauth authentication for my mobile app (first-party app).

1. When I use php artisan passport:client --password I get back a Client ID and a Client Secret. Does this value have to be fixed on my app? for example storing them hardcoded or as a "settings" file? If the values shouldn't be stored then how should it work?

2. To register a user to my app I use: $user->createToken('The-App')->accessToken; I get that the accessToken will be the one used for sending on all my requests as a Header (Authorization => Bearer $accessToken) but what exactly is "The-App" value for?

3. For login the user I'm using the URL: http://example.com/oauth/token and sending as parameters:

   { "username": "[email protected]", "password": "userpassword", "grant_type": "password", "client_id": 1, // The Client ID that I got from the command (question 1) "client_secret": "Shhh" // The Client Secret that I got from the command (question 1) }

4. When I login the user using the previous endpoint I get back a refresh_token, I read that I could refresh the token through http://example.com/oauth/token/refresh but I try to request the refresh I got Error 419, I removed the url oauth/token/refresh from the csrf verification and now I get back "message": "Unauthenticated.", I'm making the following request:

   Content-Type: x-www-form-urlencoded grant_type: refresh_token refresh_token: the-refresh-token // The Refresh Token that I got from the command (question 3) client_id: 1 // The Client ID that I got from the command (question 1) client_secret: Shhh // The Client Secret that I got from the command (question 1) scope: ''

Should I use this endpoint? or is not necessary given the app I'm trying to develop.

5. Finally, there are a lot of endpoints that I get from passport that I don't think I will use for example: oauth/clients*, oauth/personal-access-tokens* is there a way to remove them from the endpoints published by passport?

Thanks a lot for your help!

Solution 1

If you are consuming your own api then you don't need to call http://example.com/oauth/token for user login because then you need to store client_id and client_secret at app side. Better you create an api for login and there you can check the credentials and generate the personal token.

public function login(Request $request)
{
        $credentials = $request->only('email', 'password');

        if (Auth::attempt($credentials)) {
            // Authentication passed...
             $user = Auth::user();
             $token = $user->createToken('Token Name')->accessToken;

            return response()->json($token);
        }
}

Finally, there are a lot of endpoints that I get from passport that I don't think I will use for example: oauth/clients*, oauth/personal-access-tokens* is there a way to remove them from the endpoints published by passport?

You need to remove Passport::routes(); from AuthServiceProvider and manually put only required passport routes. I think you only need oauth/token route.

what exactly is "The-App" value for?

if you check oauth_access_tokens table it has name field. $user->createToken('Token Name')->accessToken; here the "Token Name" stored in name field.

How to use Laravel Passport with Password Grant Tokens?

To generate password grant token you have to store client_id and client_secret at app side (not recommended, check this ) and suppose if you have to reset the client_secret then the old version app stop working, these are the problems. To generate password grant token you have to call this api like you mention in step 3.

$http = new GuzzleHttp\Client;

$response = $http->post('http://your-app.com/oauth/token', [
    'form_params' => [
        'grant_type' => 'password',
        'client_id' => 'client-id',
        'client_secret' => 'client-secret',
        'username' => '[email protected]',
        'password' => 'my-password',
        'scope' => '',
    ],
]);

return json_decode((string) $response->getBody(), true);

Generate token from refresh_token

$http = new GuzzleHttp\Client;

$response = $http->post('http://your-app.com/oauth/token', [
    'form_params' => [
        'grant_type' => 'refresh_token',
        'refresh_token' => 'the-refresh-token',
        'client_id' => 'client-id',
        'client_secret' => 'client-secret',
        'scope' => '',
    ],
]);

return json_decode((string) $response->getBody(), true);

You can look this https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/passport#implicit-grant-tokens too.

Solution 2

Tackling Question 5

Finally, there are a lot of endpoints that I get from passport that I don't think I will use for example: oauth/clients*, oauth/personal-access-tokens* is there a way to remove them from the endpoints published by passport?

---

Passport::routes($callback = null, array $options = []) takes an optional $callback function and optional $options argument.

The callback function takes a $router argument from which you can then choose which routes to install as shown below in your AuthServiceProvider.php that is enabling a more granular configuration:

Passport::routes(function ($router) {
    $router->forAccessTokens();
    $router->forPersonalAccessTokens();
    $router->forTransientTokens();
});

Passport::tokensExpireIn(Carbon::now()->addMinutes(10));

Passport::refreshTokensExpireIn(Carbon::now()->addDays(10));

This way we only create the passport routes that we need.

forAccessTokens(); enable us to create access tokens.
forPersonalAccessTokens(); enable us to create personal tokens although we will not use this in this article. Lastly, forTransientTokens(); creates the route for refreshing tokens.

If you run php artisan route:list you can see the new endpoints installed by Laravel Passport.

| POST | oauth/token         | \Laravel\Passport\Http\Controllers\AccessTokenController@issueToken
| POST | oauth/token/refresh | \Laravel\Passport\Http\Controllers\TransientTokenController@refresh

Comments

[Wellwisher]

For password grant you cannot use $user->createToken('The-App')->accessToken; for generating access token

[JohnnyAce]

Hi @Wellwisher can you tell me why I can not use that option?

[Wellwisher]

That option is for generating personal access token and in your code you have used the password grand. To generate token use this method laravel.com/docs/5.6/passport#requesting-password-grant-toke‌​ns

[Jagadesha NH]

jagadeshanh.wordpress.com/2016/12/27/… wrote this little long ago. Still it can be used as a reference.

[amansoni211]

just curious, I have been consuming APIs since years, API providers always give the client_id and client_secret for authentication. why do we need email and password here in laravel passport?

[rkj]

@amansoni211 yes you are right but in that case we generally call those api from server side. Here the question is to use the client_id and client_secrect at app side and for that you can not store it at client side. Hope it may clear you

[amansoni211]

@rkj Well explained, Thanks. What method of authentication would you suggest [in passport] if need to expose my api to business partners who will eventually access my APIs from their web servers?