API Bearer Auth vs QRAuth – Passwordless & Social Login

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 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!

QRAuth replaces the password field on your WordPress login page with a drop-in QR widget. Users sign in by scanning with the QRAuth mobile app; a cryptographic signature is verified server-to-server before WordPress sets the auth cookie. Social login (Google, GitHub, Microsoft, Apple) is brokered by QRAuth’s hosted approval page, so you never have to register an OAuth app or hold a client secret. One Client ID is the only configuration. Paste it into Settings → QRAuth and the widget appears on wp-login.php. Everything else — the approval flow, the signing, the token refresh — lives in the QRAuth platform. Account safety is the default. Auto-provisioning is off out of the box: only WordPress users who already exist (matched on email) can sign in via QRAuth. Flip on auto-provisioning and new users are created as Subscriber — that’s the only role available, intentionally and at every layer (settings UI, sanitiser, runtime). Operators who need a different role for an individual user can change it manually via Users → All Users after their first sign-in. The plugin never stores the signing material, never issues a redirect outside your site, and never touches your user table on uninstall. Self-hosted, no third-party scripts on wp-login.php. The QRAuth web component ships vendored inside the plugin — the only outbound call is from your server to QRAuth’s verification endpoint during a sign-in attempt. Open source build. The compressed JavaScript at assets/js/qrauth-components.js is built from publicly available TypeScript source at https://github.com/qrauth-io/qrauth/tree/main/packages/web-components. The unminified source files are also vendored alongside the minified bundle inside this plugin (assets/js/source/) for offline review. See the Source section below for build instructions. External services This plugin connects to QRAuth (https://qrauth.io) — the identity verification service that performs the actual passwordless / social sign-in. QRAuth is operated by ProgressNet, the publisher of this plugin. Without QRAuth there is no widget and no sign-in. What the service is and what it is used for QRAuth verifies that the user who scanned the QR code (or completed a social-provider flow on the hosted approval page) is the same person who initiated the sign-in on your WordPress site, then returns a signed assertion that the plugin uses to set the WordPress auth cookie. What data is sent and when Auth-session creation — when a visitor opens a page that hosts the widget (wp-login.php, the registration form, a shortcode-enabled page, or a WooCommerce sign-in form), the plugin’s same-origin REST proxy sends your Client ID, Client Secret (server-side only — never exposed to the browser), and the host page URL to https://qrauth.io/api/v1/auth-sessions. No visitor data is included in this request. Sign-in verification — when the visitor approves the sign-in (by scanning with the QRAuth mobile app or completing a social-provider flow on QRAuth’s hosted approval page), the plugin’s REST proxy fetches the verified result from https://qrauth.io/api/v1/auth-sessions/verify-result. The response carries the QRAuth user identifier and, when the email scope is allowed in Settings → QRAuth, the user’s email address. The plugin uses this only to locate or create the matching WordPress user; nothing beyond a hashed link reference is retained. Hosted approval page — when a visitor on a phone taps “Continue with QRAuth”, the browser navigates to https://qrauth.io/a/ to complete the social-provider flow. This is a standard cross-domain navigation initiated by the visitor. The vendored web component (assets/js/qrauth-components.js) is served from your own WordPress site — there is no third-party JavaScript on wp-login.php, and the component does not contact qrauth.io directly from the browser; all server-to-server calls are proxied via your site’s REST API. Service terms and policies Terms of Service: https://qrauth.io/terms Privacy Policy: https://qrauth.io/privacy Data Processing Addendum: https://qrauth.io/dpa List of Sub-processors: https://qrauth.io/subprocessors Source The compiled bundle at assets/js/qrauth-components.js carries the following banner header at the top of the file: ` /*! * @qrauth/web-components v0.4.1 * Vendored by qrauth-passwordless-social-login. Do not edit by hand. * * Source: https://github.com/qrauth-io/qrauth/tree/main/packages/web-components * License: MIT * npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@qrauth/web-components * Build: npm install && npm run build:assets (see bin/fetch-web-components.mjs) * * The unminified TypeScript source for this bundle is also vendored at * assets/js/source/ — see assets/js/source/README.md for provenance. */ ` The unminified TypeScript source files are also vendored alongside the compiled bundle inside this plugin (assets/js/source/) for offline review. The plugin’s own source — PHP, the small browser adapter (assets/js/qrauth-adapter.js), build scripts, tests, and CI — is publicly maintained under GPL-2.0-or-later at: Plugin source repository: https://github.com/qrauth-io/qrauth-passwordless-social-login The PHP and assets/js/qrauth-adapter.js shipped in the plugin ZIP are non-minified — read them directly without checking out the repo. The vendored file assets/js/qrauth-components.js is a pinned production build of the public @qrauth/web-components library. The non-compiled source for that library is openly available: Source repository: https://github.com/qrauth-io/qrauth/tree/main/packages/web-components (MIT-licensed) npm release: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@qrauth/web-components — pinned to v0.4.1, sha512 in package.json under the qrauth.webComponentsIntegrity key Build instructions for the upstream library: https://github.com/qrauth-io/qrauth/blob/main/BUILDING.md To regenerate the vendored bundle from the pinned npm release, clone the plugin source repository linked above and run from its root: npm install npm run build:assets The build script bin/fetch-web-components.mjs (kept in the plugin source repository, not in the WordPress.org plugin ZIP) downloads the npm tarball, verifies its sha512 SRI hash against package.json#qrauth.webComponentsIntegrity, extracts the IIFE build, and writes it to assets/js/qrauth-components.js. CI runs the same script before the WordPress.org plugin-check job, so the bundle distributed on the directory always matches the published npm release. To rebuild from upstream source instead of the pinned tarball, follow BUILDING.md in the upstream library repository above.