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18 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
18 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
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# OmniAuth
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I know what you're thinking: yes, it's yet **another** authentication solution for Rack applications. But we're going to do things a little bit differently this time. OmniAuth is built from the ground up on the philosophy that **authentication is not the same as identity**. OmniAuth is based on two observations:
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1. The traditional 'sign up using a login and password' model is becoming the exception, not the rule. Modern web applications offer external authentication via OpenID, Facebook, and OAuth.
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2. The interconnectable web is no longer a dream, it is a necessity. It is not unreasonable to expect that one application may need to be able to connect to one, three, or twelve other services. Modern authentication systems should a user's identity to be associated with many authentications.
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## Theoretical Framework
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OmniAuth works on the principle that every authentication system can essentially be boiled down into two "phases".
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### The Request Phase
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In the Request Phase, we *request* information from the user that is necessary to complete authentication. This information may be **POST**ed to a URL or performed externally through an authentication process such as OpenID.
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### The Callback Phase
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In the Callback Phase, we receive an authenticated **unique identifier** that can differentiate this user from other users of the same authentication system. Additionally, we may provide **user information** that can be automatically harvested by the application to fill in the details of the authenticating user.
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