SOAP authentication

Introduction

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a messaging protocol for exchanging structured information in a web environment. SOAP authentication is used specifically for authenticating SOAP-based web services.

How it works

The Patchworks Connector Builder incorporates token-based authentication for SOAP. When requests are made, user credentials (provided when the connector instance was created) are passed for authentication and a token is returned - tokens are incorporated into SOAP messages.

Your authentication setup will typically include variables for user credentials (e.g. username and password) and a response_authentication_token_key (or similar) which tells Patchworks where to find a token in authentication response SOAP messages. For example:

In this example, notice that a response_authentication_token_key field value is defined as part of the setup (because it never changes). As such we don't need to display this as a field for users to complete, so it's NOT required, configurable, or advanced.

If the field you define as the location for tokens contains anything more than just the token, you'll need a POST authentication request script to strip out the token. For an example, we recommend installing the Peoplevox connector from the Patchworks marketplace and checking the setup.

User experience of SOAP authentication

When a Patchworks user adds an instance of a connector and chooses to authenticate with SOAP authentication, they will see something similar to the example below:

Required variables will vary, depending on the API but in general there will be at least fields for users to enter their credentials.

SOAP-based authentication examples

It can be useful to compare how existing connectors have been configured for SOAP-based authentication. Some examples are linked below:

You can install any of these for comparison.

Related information

• Configuring token-based authentication