authenticationmobileibm-cloudibm-mobile-services

Is Bluemix Mobile client access's custom login similar to OAuth?

I see that Bluemix Mobile client access service lets me use Google, Facebook and Custom IDs to login to the mobile app.

Is the custom IDs login option similar to OAuth? The documentation refers to this lightly, but I'm not clear here.

Thanks, Chaitanya

Solution

  • MCA uses the OAuth2 protocol.

    From the docs:

    The Mobile Client Access integration enables any web application, regardless of the technology it implements, to take advantage of the OAuth2 protocol.

    Here's the Node.js OAuth SDK and two custom identity provider samples that might help clear things up:

    https://github.com/ibm-bluemix-mobile-services/bms-mca-custom-identity-provider-sample

    https://github.com/ibm-bluemix-mobile-services/bms-mca-custom-identity-provider-with-user-management

    When you write your own custom auth, MCA uses the OAuth2 protocol with your custom auth code as the token endpoint. After you authenticate/sign in against your custom implementation, MCA provides a token that you can use to access MCA's authorization endpoints.