JWT Authentication for WordPress REST API

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication Method involves the REST APIs access on validation based on the JWT (JSON Web Token), Each time a request to access the API will be made, the authentication will be done against that JWT token, and on the basis of the verification of that JWT token, the resources for that API request will be allowed to access.

Get this plugin

WordPress REST API Authentication

Download And Installation

Log into your WordPress instance as an admin.
Go to the WordPress Dashboard -> Plugins and click on Add New.
Search for a WordPress REST API Authentication plugin and click on Install Now.
Once installed click on Activate.

Use Case: Secure/Protect or authentication of WordPress REST API Endpoints using the JWT(JSON Web Token).

Suppose you have a mobile/web application and want to allow access to the WordPress REST API endpoints based on the user capabilities such that only users with that particular capability should perform create/update operations while users with other roles can only view that. Then in such cases, you can authenticate the REST API endpoints using the JWT(JSON Web Tokens) obtained in accordance with user credentials and this method allows you to do it very securely. So, making the REST API request with this JWT passed in the Authorization header allows access to the resource/data or provides the capability/authorization to perform WordPress operation that requires particular user capability. This method provides the encryption of the token using 2 methods- HSA or RSA and valid for a limited time. Hence security is not a concern.

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication method using jwt

The flow for WordPress REST API authentication can be achieved using the JWT method is explained below:

1. The WordPress REST API request is made with all the required parameters to obtain the JWT token. The obtained JWT token is provided in encrypted format using the HSA or RSA algorithm hence there will be utmost security.

2. Then the actual WordPress REST API request to access the resource/data or to perform operations with the WordPress database is made with the JWT token obtained in the last step is passed in the Authorization header with the token types as Bearer and our plugin will validate that JWT token and if the validation/authentication is successful then the API requester will be provided with the resource else an error response will be returned. So our plugin will act both as the JWT token provider and the JWT token validator.

Related Usecase:How to make JWT authenticated requests to the WordPress REST API endpoints?
Authentication of Woocommerce/WordPress REST APIs using JWT (JSON Web tokens).

Read Use Cases for the following Rest API Authentication Methods:

1. Basic Authentication

2. API Key Authentication

3. OAuth 2.0 Authentication

4. Third Party Provider Authentication

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication Method:

Select your Authentication method → JWT Authentication and click on Save Configuration.

Here you would need to make two calls:

I : Get the JWT Token

To get the JWT Token, you would need to make an REST API Call to Token endpoint as below:

Request: POST https://<domain-name>/wp-json/api/v1/token
Body:
username = <wordpress username>
password = <wordpress password>

II : Send API Request

Once you get the JWT token, you can use it to request access to the WordPress REST APIs as shown below:

Request: GET https://<domain-name>/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

Header: Authorization : Bearer <JWT token>

NOTE: Above token is valid for 1 hour by default. Users have to create a token each time they want to request the API access
Check out the developer documentation for more details.

Postman Samples:

Follow the steps below to make REST API request using Postman:

Click on the Postman Samples tab in the plugin.

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication method postman implementation

A JSON file will be auto downloaded.

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication method postman JSON file

Import the downloaded JSON file into the Postman Application as shown below.
a) REST API Request to obtain the JWT token

Once you import the json file, click on the REST API request under the Collections as shown in the last figure. Replace the <wp_base_url> with your Wordpress domain in the http://<wp_base_url>/wp-json/wp/v2/posts and replace the <wordpress_username> with WordPress username and <wordpress_username> with WordPress password in the body parameters.

WordPress REST JWT Authentication method postman replace base url

Example

WordPress REST JWT Authentication method postman replace base url example

NOTE: Copy the jwt token obtained from response. It will be used in the resource API requests to authenticate.

b) REST API Request to obtain the actual resource

Once you import the json file, click on the REST API request under the Collections as shown in the last figure. Replace the <wp_base_url> with your Wordpress domain in the http://<wp_base_url>/wp-json/wp/v2/posts and replace the <jwt_token> with the jwt token copied from the response obtained after the token request.

WordPress REST JWT Authentication method postman replace base url actual resource

Example

WordPress REST API JWT Authentication method postman replace url actual resource

Feature Description

1. Role Based REST API restriction:

This feature allows restricting the REST API access based on the user roles. You can whitelist the roles for which you want to allow access to the requested resource for the REST APIs. So whenever a REST API request is made by a user, his role will be fetched and only allowed to access the resource if his role is whitelisted.

How to configure it?

First, go to the plugin ‘Advanced Settings’ tab.
Then, in the Role based Restriction section, all the roles by default will be allowed to access the APIs. You can enable the checkbox of the roles for which you want to restrict access.

WordPress REST API Basic Authentication method postman implementation

In the above screenshot, the subscriber role checkbox is enabled. So whenever an API request is made by the user with his role as subscriber then that user won’t be allowed to access the requested resource.

Note: The Role based restriction feature is valid for Basic authentication(Username: password), JWT method, and OAuth 2.0 (Password grant).

2. Custom Header

This feature provides an option to choose a custom header rather than the default ‘Authorization’ header.

It will increase the security as you have the header named with your ‘custom name’, so if someone makes the REST API request with a header as ‘Authorization’ then he won’t be able to access the APIs.

How to configure it?

First, go to the plugin ‘Advanced Settings’ tab.
Then in the ‘Custom Header’ section, you can edit the textbox to enter the custom name you want.

3. Exclude REST APIs

This feature allows you to whitelist your REST APIs so these can be accessed directly without any authentication. Hence all these whitelisted REST APIs are publicly available.

How to configure it?

First, go to the plugin ‘Advanced Settings’ tab.
Then in the ‘Exclude REST APIs’, you can enter your APIs in the prescribed format which needs to be whitelisted for public access.

Example: Suppose if you want to exclude the REST API ‘/wp-json/wp/v2/posts’ then you have to enter ‘/wp/v2/posts’ in the textbox.

4. Custom Token Expiry

This feature is applicable for JWT and OAuth 2.0 methods which uses time based tokens to authenticate the WordPress REST API endpoints. This feature allows you to set the custom expiry for the tokens such that the token will no longer be valid once the token expires.

How to configure it?

First, go to the plugin ‘Advanced Settings’ tab.
Then in the ‘Token Expiry Configuration’ section, the access token validity and refresh token(used for OAuth 2.0 method) can be altered. By default the access token expiry time is set to 60 minutes and the refresh token expiry time is set to 14 days. Hence with this feature, the expiry can be adjusted accordingly as per the requirements.

Hence, with this custom token expiry feature, the security is increased furthermore.

5. Enable Advanced Encryption for the tokens using HMAC

This feature is available with the Basic Authentication method in which by default the token is encrypted using Base64 encoding technique but with the advanced feature, the token can be encrypted with highly secure HMAC encryption which is very secure.

6. Signature Validation for JWT based tokens

This feature allows a secure signing of the JWT signature for the JWT token such that your JWT token is much more secure and the signature can only be decoded using the client secret/certificate. It means your signature is private and can not be seen by others.

We provide the support for 2 Signing algorithms: HS256 and RS256.So, any of the signing algorithms can be chosen from the dropdown as shown in the above image.

Also, you need to add your client secret or certificate from which is used to sign the signature of the JWT.

7. Create User Specific API key/tokens

This feature is available within the API key method in which the tokens can be generated in accordance with the user information rather than a randomly generated token which is a universal key.
With the Universal API key/token, the user can not have permission to certain WordPress REST APIs with request method as POST,PUT,DELETE like creating users, posts, pages etc, in which a particular user permissions/role is required to perform operations via use of the REST API request as the universal key is randomly generated and does not contain the user based description.
So this User based API key/token feature allows the user to access the REST APIs with request method as POST,PUT,DELETE in WordPress which requires user credentials or certain roles to perform the operation such that the when the WordPress REST API request is made with the user-based key then the role of the user is obtained and he will be allowed to access the API only if he has permission to do so.
For Example: Only users with administrator and editor roles have permissions to create/edit/delete a post.
So, if a request is made to this API to create/delete/edit the post, the API response will result in “You are not allowed to perform this operation”.
Now, if a request is made with the user-based token generated for the user that has administrator or editor role then only they have access to this API and are able to perform the operation(create/update/delete) via the API call.

How to use this feature:

Select the user from the dropdown and click on the Create API Key button.

A pop up will appear on the screen, you just need to click on the OK button to copy the token.

Now this token can be used with the API request just like the universal key is used to make the API request.

Need Help?

Mail us on oauthsupport@xecurify.com for quick guidance(via email/meeting) on your requirement and our team will help you to select the best suitable solution/plan as per your requirement.