Accessing the AuthAction Management API with Machine-to-Machine Application

AuthAction is a powerful authentication and authorization platform that offers a range of features, including support for single-page applications (SPA) and machine-to-machine (M2M) applications. It provides an easy-to-use interface for managing users, roles, and organizations, and supports OAuth2 and social logins. Best of all, AuthAction is scalable, allowing up to 50,000 monthly active users for free. Whether you're developing an app for a startup or a large enterprise, AuthAction provides a flexible and secure solution for your authentication needs.

In this guide, I’ll walk you through how to access the AuthAction Management API using a Machine-to-Machine (M2M) application. Whether you’re building a backend service or a script that needs to manage users, roles, or other resources, this post will get you up and running with the correct setup and API calls.

🤔 Why Use an M2M Application?

An M2M application is perfect when your service or script needs to securely access APIs without any user interaction. This approach leverages the OAuth2 client credentials flow to obtain access tokens that can be used for authentication.

✍️ Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up

Step 1: Create an M2M Application in AuthAction

1. Log in to your AuthAction dashboard.
2. Navigate to the Applications section.
3. Create a new application and select the type as Machine-to-Machine (M2M).
4. In the application’s APIServer tab, ensure you grant access to the AuthAction Management API.

Step 2: Retrieve API Credentials

After creating the application:

• Note down the Client ID and Client Secret for your M2M application.
• These credentials will be essential for obtaining access tokens.

Step 3: Obtain an Access Token

To access the Management API, you’ll need an access token via the client credentials flow. Here's how you can do it:

API Endpoint

POST https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com/oauth/m2m/token

Example Request (using curl)

curl --request POST \
  --url https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com/oauth/m2m/token \
  --header 'content-type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "client_id": "<YOUR_M2M_APP_CLIENT_ID>",
    "client_secret": "<YOUR_M2M_APP_CLIENT_SECRET>",
    "audience": "https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com",
    "grant_type": "client_credentials"
  }'

Example Response

{
  "access_token": "YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN",
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "expires_in": 86400
}

• The access_token will be used to authenticate requests to the Management API.
• The token is valid for the duration specified in expires_in (e.g., 24 hours).

Step 4: Call the Management API

Once you have the access_token, you can use it to call any Management API endpoint (https://authaction.readme.io/).

Example Request

Here’s how you can retrieve the list of users:

curl --request GET \
  --url https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com/api/v1/users \
  --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN'

Example Response

[
  {
    "id": "671e6abcf34ff7b958a64f81",
    "name": "John Doe",
    "email": "[e-mail]"
  },
  ...
]

Step 5: Troubleshooting and Permissions

If you encounter a 401 Unauthorized error:

• Verify permissions: Ensure your M2M application has authorized to the AuthAction Management API.
• Check the audience: Ensure the audience in your token request matches your AuthAction domain (e.g., https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com).

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✅ Key Takeaways

• M2M applications allow backend services to interact with APIs securely, using access tokens obtained via the client credentials flow.
• Properly configure the AuthAction Management API permissions in your M2M application.
• Always validate the audience and other token parameters when calling APIs.

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🌟 Bonus: Automating Token Retrieval

If you’re working with scripts or automation tools, you can store the Client ID and Client Secret in environment variables. Here’s a quick Node.js snippet for retrieving the token:

const axios = require('axios');

async function getAccessToken() {
  const response = await axios.post('https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com/oauth/m2m/token', {
    client_id: process.env.M2M_CLIENT_ID,
    client_secret: process.env.M2M_CLIENT_SECRET,
    audience: `https://<tenant>.<region>.authaction.com`,
    grant_type: 'client_credentials',
  });

  return response.data.access_token;
}

Now you can securely manage and automate API requests with ease!

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💬 Share Your Feedback

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

Happy coding! 🚀