By Radityo Pradana, Solution Architect Alibaba Cloud Indonesia
In today's digital landscape, API security is more critical than ever. Ensuring that only authorized users can access your API services while preventing unauthorized access is a key priority for any organization. One of the most widely adopted methods for API authentication is the use of JSON Web Tokens (JWT). In this blog, we'll explore how you can integrate JWT token authentication with Alibaba Cloud's API Gateway to secure your APIs and manage access control effectively.
JSON Web Token (JWT) is an open standard for securely transmitting information between parties as a JSON object. It is widely used in modern applications for user authentication and authorization. A JWT typically consists of three parts:
JWTs are signed using a secret key or a public/private key pair, ensuring that the token's contents haven't been tampered with.
Using JWT tokens with API Gateway offers several advantages:
• Stateless Authentication: JWT is stateless, meaning that once the token is issued, there is no need to maintain session information on the server. This reduces server-side overhead.
• Scalability: Since JWT tokens are self-contained and don’t require server-side storage, they are ideal for scalable microservices architectures.
• Security: With JWT, you can easily manage authorization by embedding roles, permissions, and other claims directly into the token, ensuring that each API request is properly authenticated.
Leveraging JWT with Alibaba Cloud API Gateway comes with several steps:
There are several methods in creating a JWK pair to be used to issue a token. In this example, we will be using online JWK generator. We will be capturing both private key and public key from this operation.
Once JWK pair is generated, we will be using the public key and private key to issue a token. There are several ways to generate a token, in this example we will be using another online Token generator. We will be capturing the encoded token to be integrated with our API
• Log on to the API Gateway console.
• In the left-side navigation pane, choose Manage APIs > Plug-ins.
• On the Plug-ins page, click Create Plug-in in the upper-right corner.
• On the Create Plug-in page, set Plug-in Type to JWT Authorization. The following example shows the configurations of a JWT authentication plug-in.
On the Plug-in List page, find the JWT authentication plug-in you created and click Bind API in the Actions column. In the Bind API dialog box, specify an API group and environment to select APIs, add the APIs to the Selected APIs pane, and click OK.
With the API bound with JWT plugin, the API will require encoded token to be included in the request header in order to pass the authorization. The sample of calling the API with the token included is as follow:
More information and documentation for API Gateway with JWT can be found here:
Safeguarding Your Business with Alibaba Cloud's End-to-End Security Solutions
Implementing CDC to MaxCompute with Apache Flink: A Case Study
103 posts | 18 followers
FollowAlibaba Clouder - July 25, 2019
Alibaba Cloud Native Community - November 18, 2024
Alibaba Cloud Native - September 8, 2022
Dikky Ryan Pratama - May 22, 2023
Alibaba Developer - June 22, 2020
JDP - May 20, 2022
103 posts | 18 followers
Follow
Web App Service
Web App Service allows you to deploy, scale, adjust, and monitor applications in an easy, efficient, secure, and flexible manner.
Learn More
WAF(Web Application Firewall)
A cloud firewall service utilizing big data capabilities to protect against web-based attacks
Learn More
Web Hosting Solution
Explore Web Hosting solutions that can power your personal website or empower your online business.
Learn More
Web Hosting
Explore how our Web Hosting solutions help small and medium sized companies power their websites and online businesses.
Learn MoreMore Posts by Alibaba Cloud Indonesia
