server

All servlets in SUSI.AI have a BaseUserRole defined. It represents the access level you need to access the endpoint corresponding to that servlet. The lowermost BaseUserRole a SUSI.AI servlet can have is ANONYMOUS, which means that anyone can access the endpoint corresponding to these endpoints. But if the BaseUserRole is higher than that, then you need an access token to access the endpoint. This blog post explains how you can get access token to access the endpoints on a local server.

What are endpoints in an API?

An endpoint in API is one end of a communication channel. When an API interacts with another system, the touchpoints of this communication are considered endpoints. For APIs, an endpoint can include a URL of a server or service. Each endpoint is the location from which APIs can access the resources they need to carry out their function.

APIs work using ‘requests’ and ‘responses.’ When an API requests information from a web application or web server, it will receive a response. The place that APIs send requests and where the resource lives, is called an endpoint.

For example, the endpoint for https://api.susi.ai/cms/getSkillRating.json?queryParameters would be /cms/getSkillRating.json.

Servlets and Endpoints in SUSI.AI

All servlets in our SUSI project define an endpoint and also define a BaseUserRole, that is, the amount of privileges required to access the information on those endpoints. If the BaseUserRole defined is ANONYMOUS, then anyone can access the endpoint directly. But if the BaseUserRole is anything higher than that, then we would need an access token to access that.

How to get Access Token?

If you’re trying to access the endpoints with BaseUserRole higher than ANONYMOUS on the actual hosted server, then you can simply login to https://chat.susi.ai and get the access token from the Network tab of the Developers Tool. We can then use that token and pass that as a query parameter along with the other parameters of that particular endpoint. For example,

http://localhost:4000/aaa/listUserSettings.json?access_token=6O7cqoMbzlClxPwg1is31Tz5pjVwo3

But, the problem arises when you are trying to access such endpoints on local server. The local User data is completely different from the server User data. Hence, we need to generate an access token in localhost itself.

To generate access token for local server, we need to follow these steps :

1. First, we need to hit the /aaa/signup.json endpoint with a new account credentials which we want to register for the localhost session. This is done as shown in below example:

http://localhost:4000/aaa/signup.json?signup=anyEmail&password=anyPassword

2. Then, we need to hit the /aaa/login.json endpoint with the same credentials you registered in the previous step. This is done as shown in below example:

http://localhost:4000/aaa/login.json?login=yourEmail&type=access-token&password=yourPassword

If you’ve entered the registered credentials correctly, then the output of the /aaa/login.json endpoint would be a JSON as shown below:

{
  "accepted": true,
  "valid_seconds": 604800,
  "access_token": "7JPi7zNwemg1YYnr4d9JIdZMaIWizV",
  "message": "You are logged in as anyemail",
  "session": {"identity": {
    "type": "host",
    "name": "127.0.0.1_4e75edbb",
    "anonymous": true
  }}
}

As it can be seen from the above JSON response, we get the access token which we needed. Hence, copy this access token and store it somewhere because you can now use this access token to access the endpoints with BaseUserRole as User for this localhost session.

Note that you’ll have to follow all the above steps again if you start a fresh localhost session.

Resources

• Endpoints in API
• Access Token
• Servlets in Java