OAuth/For Developers

This page explains how to develop applications that can integrate with a wiki running Extension:OAuth (an extension which turns MediaWiki into an OAuth server) to securely request permission to act on the user's behalf.

If you are developing a bot or similar application where the same consumer is always used with the same user account, you might prefer the simpler OAuth/Owner-only_consumers.

For a beginner-oriented introduction, see these slides.

OAuth in a nutshell
OAuth allows an application to request permission from a user to act through that user's wiki account, without knowing the user's password, and without being able to do everything the user could (e.g. the app might be able to edit articles but not delete them, so even users with extended permissions can safely use OAuth-enabled tools).

This happens via the OAuth 1.0a protocol, and has three components: The OAuth MediaWiki extension also includes a custom protocol for determining the identity of a user.
 * 1) The developer must register the application (often called "consumer" in the OAuth terminology) on the wiki, possibly go through some sort of review process, and will receive some credentials.
 * 2) When a user wants to use it, the application must initiate an authorization process. This will involve sending the user to a special page on the wiki, which will display an authorization dialog. If the user accepts, the application will receive another set of credentials (which are specific to that user, and can be revoked by the user at any time).
 * 3) When the application actually needs to make an action (API request) on the user's behalf, it can combine the credentials received in steps 1 and 2 to sign the request.

Security benefits and trade-offs

 * Unlike password-based authentication, the protocol prevents any man-in-the-middle attack even if the wiki does not require HTTPS: all interactions between MediaWiki and the application are signed with either a shared secret (using HMAC-SHA1), or a public key (RSA). HTTPS is still required for certain steps though (for obtaining the shared secret in the second step of authorization when not using RSA, and during app registration).
 * Actions via OAuth happen under the user's name but will be tagged with the application's name as well so rouge applications can be identified. Wiki admins can revoke the application's permissions (and thus bar it from any further action) if needed.
 * The user can can revoke the permission of the application to use that specific user account if they don't like how it works or don't trust it anymore. Unlike a password change, this is not disruptive for the user.
 * Sufficiently flexible applications might allow users to circumvent IP blocks (since MediaWiki will see the IP of the application server, not that of the user). This can be handled the same way proxies are, by trusting XFF headers set by the application (see T159889 for some limitations).

Intended Users

 * Websites that want to take actions on MediaWiki on behalf of their users
 * Bots
 * Websites that want to use MediaWiki as an identity provider for authentication (using the extension's /identity method, which is not standard OAuth)
 * But not...
 * Desktop applications (the Consumer Secret needs to be secret!). Some alternatives are being considered. See past discussions:

Application Approval

 * Wiki administrators will verify that OAuth applications are written by reputable developers, and the developers are intending to use OAuth correctly.
 * See the draft guidelines for apps on meta
 * Application developers must apply to have their application (Consumer) approved at meta:Special:OAuthConsumerRegistration/propose
 * A user with the oauth-admin right must approve the application (currently users in the oauthadmin group)
 * Your MediaWiki user can authorize your app while waiting for approval, so as a developer, you can start integrating your app immediately, without waiting for approval (you'll just have to get approval before other users can authorize your app)

Browse approved and proposed applications

 * meta:Special:OAuthListConsumers

Attached Application Responsibility

 * Establish user's session
 * Special:OAuth/initiate - get a temporary (request) token
 * Redirect the user's browser to Special:Oauth/authorize?oauth_token= &oauth_consumer_key=
 * The user will be redirected back the the url you registered
 * Special:OAuth/token – get the authorized (access) token for this user
 * Set an Authorization: header when calling api.php with oauth_version, oauth_nonce, oauth_timestamp, oauth_consumer_key, oauth_token, oauth_signature_method, oauth_signature

Developing
OAuth is now available in your MediaWiki-Vagrant development environment. Add the oauth role, and your wiki will be able to authorize OAuth apps.

Avoid repetitive login prompts
If your application doesn't persist sessions on the user-end, you might be repetitively prompting them to go through the OAuth approval screen. There's a better way! Instead of hitting

as the redirect in the second leg of the handshake, you can hit

instead. This won't prompt the user to approve your application but instead just directly reach your callback url after a redirect.

Note: This only works when:
 * The user has already authorized your application at least once before.
 * If the application has not been authorized previously the normal dialog will be seen.
 * Your tool has access to either "Authentication only with access to real name and email address via Special:OAuth/identify, no API access." or "Authentication only, no API access." grants.

PHP demo cli client with pre-shared secret

 * OAuth Hello World – easy to understand demo application written in PHP

PHP demo cli client with RSA keys
Before Starting:

Golang demo cli client with HMAC
Before you begin:

Python
Libraries:
 * flask-mwoauth, a Flask blueprint to run OAuth against MediaWiki's Extension:OAuth (See tutorial: My first Flask OAuth tool)
 * MediaWiki-OAuth (mwoauth), on top of requests-oauthlib
 * Mediawiki backend for python-social-auth (Example tutorial: My first Django OAuth tool)

Ruby: OmniAuth strategy
For Ruby, you can use this MediaWiki strategy for OmniAuth (available under the MIT License): https://github.com/timwaters/omniauth-mediawiki also available as a gem: https://rubygems.org/gems/omniauth-mediawiki

Express
If you're using Express JS using OAuth is pretty straightforward thanks to the npm modules passport-mediawiki-oauth and oauth-fetch-json. The former will help you effortlessly add login via MediaWiki to your application whereas the latter will allow you to make authenticated requests to the API.

Weekipedia, A full scale React.js port of the Wikipedia mobile site uses both.