Authenticating users via the API

Sometimes when developing an app that integrates with Agilebase, you may want to allow it to query the system to check the login details a user provides. In other words, let a user ’log in’ via your app.

The API mechanisms described in this section (push, pull etc.) don’t require a login to use, they work only via the API keys as described, however your app may still wish to test a users login to ensure they are a valid user.

To do that, the third party app must act exactly as if it were a web browser allowing the user to log in. In other words it must follow this process:

1. Visit https://appserver.gtportalbase.com/Agilebase/AppController.servlet?return=user_details
2. The page will return a login form and a cookie JSESSIONID
3. Post the form i.e. submit values j_username and j_password, along with the cookie
4. If the username and password are correct, a JSON object will be returned in the response, containing the user’s details. If not, an error page will be returned

Resources / Examples

Java

See section Form Login with Cookies of https://www.tutorialspoint.com/apache_httpclient/apache_httpclient_form_based_login.htm

React

Use the ‘react-cookie’ package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-cookies

Python

Use the ‘urllib2’ library: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/301924/python-urllib-urllib2-httplib-confusion'