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Authenticate

According to the RINF Application Guide, the access to the RINF data is controlled, in the sense that an authentication is required before accessing the data through the RINF application and therefore through the RINF API.

If you don't have a RINF account, you should start by requesting your user account.

Token based authentication

The API uses authorization to ensure that client requests access data securely.

To implement the authentication between different applications and the RINF API, we use the token-based authentication approach

Bearer tokens allow requests to authenticate using an access key. The token is a text string, included in the request header. In the request Authorization tab, select Bearer Token from the Type dropdown list. In the Token field, enter your API key value—or for added security, store it in a variable and reference the variable by name.

The Token-Based Authentication works as follows:

• The user enters his credentials (i.e. the username and password) into the client (here client means the browser or mobile devices, etc).
• The client then sends these credentials (i.e. username and password) to the RINF Authorization Server.
• Then the Authorization Server authenticates the client credentials (i.e. username and password) and generates and returns an access token. This Access Token contains enough information to identify a user and also contains the token validity duration (in seconds).
  
• The client application then includes the Access Token in the Authorization header of the HTTP request to access the restricted resources from the RINF Resource Server until the token is expired.
  

Code examples:

Sending a POST request to authenticate

                    $.ajax({
                        url: "https://rinf.era.europa.eu/api/token",
                        type: "POST",
                        data: $.param({ 
                                grant_type: 'password', 
                                username: 'john.doe@mycompany.com', 
                                password: '******************'
                            }),
                        headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' },
                        success: function (response) {

                            //keep the username to the session storage
                            sessionStorage.setItem('userName', $("#username").val());
                            //keep the access token to the session storage
                            sessionStorage.setItem('accessToken', response.access_token);
                            //get the token type and store it to the session storage
                            sessionStorage.setItem('tokenType', response.token_type);

                            // display a message or do something else
                        }
                    });
                

Using the authentication token to fetch RINF data

                $.ajax({
                    url: 'https://rinf.era.europa.eu/api/OperationalPoints',
                    type: 'GET',
                    //make sure you place the authorisation token in the header of the request
                    headers: {
                        Authorization: sessionStorage.getItem('tokenType') + ' ' + sessionStorage.getItem('accessToken')
                    },
                    success: function (response) {
                        //get the response data and do smething with it
                    },
                    error: function (response) {
                        //if there is a fail in getting the response, there will be a message
                    }
                });