From: Christian Weiske <cweiske@cweiske.de>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 12:17:26 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: document authentication signature creation
X-Git-Tag: v0.1.0~30
X-Git-Url: https://git.cweiske.de/phancap.git/commitdiff_plain/5b85ef225aef0b9052c3797861fc79cdabd1c2f4

document authentication signature creation
---

diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
index 9dfbb5e..3b71795 100644
--- a/README.rst
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -12,12 +12,17 @@ URL parameters
 ==============
 ``get.php`` supports the following parameters:
 
+Browser parameters
+==================
 ``url``
   Website URL
 ``bwidth``
   Browser width (default: 1024)
 ``bheight``
   Browser height (default: none)
+
+Screenshot parameters
+=====================
 ``swidth``
   Screenshot width (default: none (no scaling))
 ``sheight``
@@ -27,6 +32,113 @@ URL parameters
 ``smode``
   Screenshot mode (``screen`` (4:3) or ``page`` (full website height))
 
+Authentication parameters
+=========================
+``atimestamp``
+  Time at which the request URL was generated (unix timestamp)
+``atoken``
+  Access token (username)
+``asignature``
+  Signature for the request. See the authentication section.
+
+
+==============
+Authentication
+==============
+Creating screenshots of websites is a resource intensive process.
+To prevent unauthorized access to the service, phancap supports authentication
+via a signature parameter similar to OAuth's ``oauth_signature``.
+
+Phancap's configuration file may contain a ``$access`` variable:
+
+``true``
+  Everyone is allowed to access the service
+``false``
+  Nobody is allowed to access the service
+``array``
+  A list of usernames that are allowed to request screenshots, together
+  with their secret keys (password)
+
+The signature algorithm is as follows:
+
+#. Parameters ``atimestamp`` (current unix timestamp) and
+   ``atoken`` (username) have to be added to the URL parameters
+
+#. URL parameters are normalized as described in
+   `OAuth Parameters Normalization`__:
+
+   #. Sort parameters list by name
+   #. Name and value are `raw-url-encoded`__
+   #. Name and value are concatenated with ``=`` as separator
+   #. The resulting strings are concatenated with ``&`` as separator
+
+#. URL parameter string is used together with the secret key
+   to create a `HMAC-SHA1`__ digest
+
+#. Digest is appended to the URL as ``asignature``
+
+__ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5849#section-3.4.1.3.2
+__ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5849#section-3.6
+__ http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5849#section-3.4.2
+
+
+Example
+=======
+We want to create a screenshot of ``http://example.org/`` in size 400x300,
+using the browser size of 1024x768::
+
+    http://example.org/phancap/get.php?swidth=400&sheight=300&url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.org%2F&bwidth=1024&bheight=768
+
+Phancap's config file contains::
+
+    $access = array(
+        'user' => 'secret'
+    );
+
+Our parameters are thus:
+
+============== =====
+Name           Value
+============== =====
+``swidth``     ``400``
+``sheight``    ``300``
+``url``        ``http://example.org/``
+``bwidth``     ``1024``
+``bheight``    ``768``
+============== =====
+
+At first, we need to add parameters ``atimestamp`` and ``atoken``.
+``atimestamp`` is the current unix timestamp.
+``atoken`` is our user name: ``user``.
+
+Now the parameter list is sorted:
+
+============== =====
+Name           Value
+============== =====
+``atimestamp`` ``1396353987``
+``atoken``     ``user``
+``bheight``    ``768``
+``bwidth``     ``1024``
+``sheight``    ``300``
+``swidth``     ``400``
+``url``        ``http://example.org/``
+============== =====
+
+The parameters are raw-url-encoded. The only value that changes is the url,
+it becomes ``http%3A%2F%2Fexample.org%2F``.
+
+Concatenating the name/value pairs leads to the following string::
+
+    atimestamp=1396353987&atoken=user&bheight=768&bwidth=1024&sheight=300&swidth=400&url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.org%2F
+
+Creating the HMAC digest with sha1, the calculated string and our key
+``secret`` gives us the following string::
+
+    9a12eac5ff859f9306eaaf5a18b9a931fe10b89d
+
+This is the signature; it gets appended the URL as ``asignature`` parameter.
+
 
 ============
 Dependencies