Backbone.js + jsOAuth

Question

I am creating a mobile application with Backbone.js and I need to make two-way OAuth to connect to the REST API. I found a library called jsOAuth , but not sure how to integrate it with Backbone.

Should I rewrite the synchronization method to include headers?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I was able to do this without using jsOAuth. I overridden my sync model method to make jQuery ajax calls and set the beforeSend attribute for these calls to create the oauth header in the request. Then, after setting the appropriate attributes on the model (bodies and URLs in particular), all you need to do for PUT / POST is modelInstance.save() , and the model will take care of itself.

The following are examples in coffeescript.

Model Example:

 Backbone.Model.extend sync: (method, model, options) -> switch method when "create" $.ajax({ url: model.url() data: model.body dataType: 'json' cache: false type: 'POST' beforeSend: (xhr, settings) => auth = @makeAuthHeader(key, secret, settings.url, 'POST', realm) xhr.setRequestHeader('Authorization', auth) xhr.setRequestHeader('Content-Type', 'application/json') success: (data, textStatus) -> model.postSuccess(data, textStatus) error: (e, jqxhr, exception) -> model.postError(e, jqxhr, exception) }) when "update" $.ajax({ url: model.url() data: model.body … 

Function makeAuthHeader:

 makeAuthHeader: (key, secret, encodedurl, method, realm) -> accessor = {consumerSecret: secret, tokenSecret: ""} message = {action: encodedurl, method: method, parameters: [["oauth_version", "1.0"],["oauth_consumer_key", key]]} OAuth.setTimestampAndNonce(message) OAuth.SignatureMethod.sign(message, accessor) return OAuth.getAuthorizationHeader(realm, message['parameters']) 

The oauth module I use is the only Netflix created in 2008, which you can find here here . If you cleaned somehow, you can probably find the file by googling javascript oauth "This isn't as useful as you might hope" . This request may not look like file approval, but I found this to be wrong: the file is very useful.

Other possible stumbling blocks:

• Your model will need a url function that returns the URL to send the request to.
• key , secret and realm are passed to the initialization method of this model and therefore are available in the code shown above.
• model.body is an attribute that you will need to set yourself. This is not a basic attribute.
• If my example seems to be a bit off, it's because the model I showed here, in fact, I wrote just to make an oauth connection. Then I had models that actually contained data that extend this model. This is why, for example, the ajax success call method calls model.success() . If this model was a one-time one, the ajax call success method would actually do the job there successfully.

Answer 2

I think I may have answered this question on Twitter.

jsOAuth 1.x cannot be easily connected to jQuery and therefore is the foundation. However, there has been some progress since my response on Twitter.

jsOAuth 2.0 , in development, implements an interface similar to XHR so you can use it like this:

 jQuery.ajaxSettings.xhr = function () { var xhr = new OAuthRequest; xhr.consumerKey = consumerKey; xhr.consumerSecret = consumerSecret; xhr.accessTokenKey = accessTokenKey; xhr.accessTokenSecret = accessTokenSecret; return xhr; }; 

As you can see, it is inserted directly into jQuery as the XHR object that it uses.

Answer 3

Why aren't you trying to use $ .ajaxPrefilter (http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.ajaxPrefilter/)

You can add a preliminary filter, check if the url is for the scope of this oauth connection, and if so, change the headers, add the authorization header or change the request parameters.

Answer 4

You can also watch this OAuth 2.0 plugin for Backbone .