Authentication Guide
Not every endpoint in the Fifth World API requires you to authenticate. The
GET /pages endpoint, for example,
effectively lets you search page titles, or return pages that have a particular type
or tag. You can use this endpoint without authenticating and get back any public pages that
match your criteria. If you authenticate, though, your query will also include any pages
that you have access to with the account you authenticated with. Other endpoints, like the
POST /pages endpoint used to create
a new page, require you to authenticate.
The Fifth World API uses JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for
authentication. You can get a JWT from the
POST /members/auth endpoint.
You can provide either your email and passphrase, or the code for an OAuth 2.0 provider and
your token ID for use with that provider. If the API can authenticate the credentials that
you supply, it sends back a JWT.
To use your JWT, attach it to your API requests in an Authorization header,
as in this example:
GET /v1/pages?type=Place&path=/africa HTTP/1.1
Host: api.thefifthworld.com
Authorization: Bearer eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzdWIiOiIxMjM0NTY3ODkwIiwibmFtZSI6IkpvaG4gRG9lIiwiaWF0IjoxNTE2MjM5MDIyfQ.SflKxwRJSMeKKF2QT4fwpMeJf36POk6yJV_adQssw5c
Your JWT will remain valid for 15 minutes, but at any point during that time you can
make a request to the POST /members/reauth
endpoint to get a new JWT, which will be valid for another 15 minutes.