API Bearer Auth

The API Bearer Auth plugin enables authentication for the REST API by using JWT access an refresh tokens. After the user logs in, the access and refresh tokens are returned and can be used for the next requests. Issued tokens can be revoked from within the users admin screen. See below for the endpoints.

Note that after activating this plugin, all REST API endpoints will need to be authenticated, unless the endpoint is whitelisted in the api_bearer_auth_unauthenticated_urls filter (see FAQ for how to use this filter).

JWT

Access tokens can be formatted as JWT tokens. For this to work, you first have to create a secret and add it to the wp-config.php file. If you don’t do this, access tokens will work also, but are just random strings. To create a random secret key, you can do for example:

base64_encode(openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(64));

And then add the result to wp-config:

define('API_BEARER_JWT_SECRET', 'mysecretkey');

If you have problems, you can verify your JWT tokens at: https://jwt.io/

Revoke tokens

This plugin adds a column to the users table in de admin where you can see when a token expires. You can also revoke tokens by selection the “Revoke API tokens” from the bulk actions select box.

API endpoints

Note that all endpoints expect JSON in the POST body.

Login

Endpoint:

POST /api-bearer-auth/v1/login

Request body:

Note: client_name is optional. But if you use it, make sure to use it as well for the refresh call!

{"username": "my_username", "password": "my_password", "client_name": "my_app"}

Response:

{
  "wp_user": {
    "data": {
      "ID": 1,
      "user_login": "your_user_login",
      // other default WordPress user fields
    }
  },
  "access_token": "your_access_token",
  "expires_in": 86400, // number of seconds
  "refresh_token": "your_refresh_token"
}

Make sure to save the access and refresh token!

Refresh access token

Endpoint:

POST /api-bearer-auth/v1/tokens/refresh

Request body:

Note: client_name is optional. But if you did use it for the login call, make sure to use it here as well!

{"token": "your_refresh_token", "client_name": "my_app"}

Response success:

{
  "access_token": "your_new_access_token",
  "expires_in": 86400
}

Response when sending a wrong refresh token is a 401:

{
  "code": "api_api_bearer_auth_error_invalid_token",
  "message": "Invalid token.",
  "data": {
    "status": 401
  }
}

Do a request

After you have the access token, you can make requests to authenticated endpoints with an Authorization header like this:

Authorization: Bearer <your_access_token>

Note that Apache sometimes strips out the Authorization header. If this is the case, make sure to add this to the .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.*)
# Don't know why, but some need the line below instead of the RewriteRule line
# SetEnvIf Authorization .+ HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$0
RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%1]

If you are not logged in or you send an invalid access token, you get a 401 response:

{
  "code": "api_bearer_auth_not_logged_in",
  "message": "You are not logged in.",
  "data": {
    "status": 401
  }
}

Important update

Update immediately if you’re using a version below 20200807. Before this version all access tokens were updated when calling the refresh callback.

If you are affected by this the fastest solution is to execute this query:

update wp_user_tokens set access_token_valid = NOW();

This will invalidate all access tokens. This means that all users need to refresh their access token and will get a new access token and a unique one this time.

A big thank to @harchvertelol for reporting this and suggesting the fix as well!