Link relationship types for authentication

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

[RFC8288] defines a framework and registry for Link Relationships types. This specification defines a set of new relationship types to aid clients in discovering endpoints for authentication and registration: authenticate, authenticated-as, logout and register-user.¶

2. authenticate

The authenticate can be used to link to a resource that hosts a page where a user can authenticate itself for the current resource.¶

For example, this link might refer to a HTML login page.¶

Example:¶

<a href="/login" rel="authenticate">Login</a>

3. authenticated-as

The authenticated-as link refers to a resource that describes the effective authenticated user for a HTTP response.¶

Following this link might allow a client to answer the question 'who am I?'. This might link to a user profile page, or it might link to an API that returns a JSON response with user information.¶

Example:¶

Link: <https://api.example.org/users/123-abc>; rel="authenticated-as"

4. logout

The logout refers to a resource where an authenticated user might end their session.¶

In a browser this might clear cookies, or in the case of OAuth2 it could revoke any active authentication tokens.¶

5. register-user

The register-user Link Relation refers to a resource where a user might sign up for a service for the context URI.¶

The linked resource might contain a HTML registration form, or otherwise instructions that allow a client to find out how to sign up for the service.¶

6. IANA considerations

This document defines authenticate, authenticated-as, logout and register-user link relation types and adds them to the "Link Relations" registry:¶

Appendix A. Changelog

Author's Address