Magento 2 rest API - How to Manage API Authentication Lifecycle on Mobile Devices Application?

Question

In Magento [2.2.4] web API when I pass username and password then it generates token for that specific customer (Which is only valid for 1 hour - it is configurable from Magento admin)

http://magento.host/index.php/rest/V1/integration/customer/[email protected]&password=test@123

which returns token.

After generating token, when we pass that token in header.

Authorization :: Bearer *Token Value*

http://magento.host/index.php/rest/V1/customers/me

Which returns customer details.

The above case I explained is working fine for webAPI in magento2 which I tested in POSTMAN.

Now the case is,

Every hour regeneration of token and after that login again every hour is not logical for Mobile Application.

Then how Magento manages user login data and authentication in Mobile application, if it is developed API As per Service Contracts

• How long should I allow my access tokens to exist before it expires in Mobile Application?
  • I don’t want to force my users to re-authenticate every hour in Mobile Application.
  • How to properly manage your OAuth2 API token life-cycle for Mobile Application.

Making changes in Access Token Lifetime hours would not be logical solution, Because Application and web should have different lifetime hours of Token

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• Manthan Dave: Have you tried to extend token lifetime from store->configuration->services->OAuth->Customer Token Lifetime (Hours) - ?
• Aditya Shah: No, checking it by making a blank value of Customer Token Lifetime (Hours)- which will disable the feature if the value is empty. So might work.
• Aditya Shah: It won't because when we empty the value of Customer Token Lifetime then it will regenerate token every request and that all data will not expire (every request data) and it will stored in oauth_token
• Zefiryn: If you have access to the code of a store you are connecting or you can write a magento module for your app, one solution would be to update token valid date at each request when customer token is used, similar as session is done. Then until your app does any requests within token lifetime customer won't be forced to re-authorize.
• Aditya Shah: but based on which flag we consider that customer token is used.

Answer 1

To check for a valid customer token Magento checks two criteria

1. Is token revoked ( That happens when user logout) : revoked is saved as 1 in oauth_token table
2. Token is actually present in oauth_token table

Magento runs a cron to remove the expired tokens (as per lifetime in admin setting) from the table (vendor\magento\module-integration\Cron\CleanExpiredTokens.php)

Possible solution

1. Increase Token lifetime from admin
2. Override the above mentioned cron to only remove the token that are revoked i.e the logged out customer tokens

Hope this answers your question

• Vishwas Bhatnagar: I feel you are talking about the user roles ? like admin ... also please accept the answer
• Aditya Shah: No, i am talking about M2 authentication used in mobile application in back-end , Because every hour regeneration of token and after that login again every hour is not logical for Mobile Application. It should only be authenticate once and when user change the password (activity like that)
• Vishwas Bhatnagar: i think i have suggested a solution for that in my above answer we are using the same solution and working flawlessly for us
• Aditya Shah: Thanks man!! I searched a lot but didn't found any solution except yours :)