Using Google account as Login... what next?

Question

I'm developing an app for android, that will have an api-like server side. And this app will have users login mechanisms. I want to use a google/fb/twitter account as login information, as the purpose of the app is very socially-spoted.

I have already read about using the Google Account stored in the phone as user verification ( Howto use Google Accounts as login ). Problem is that I don't know what to do then? As I understood, the Account Manager, will finally give me a token. Then what do I do with it? How do I inform the server side that the user did login? How do I store this token, as I understood that this token might change when invalidated after some time...

And another thing. What do I do when user enters his G account for 1st time? I want to get his G avatar and display name, for example and store them on the server,thus saving the user a bunch of clicks? Do I send them somehow from the phone or I get them somehow from the server?

This same questions might arise for FB later, too.

Hope I did ask my question correctly, as this is a little more general question...

TIA.

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

2

I think this question covers exactly what you're asking.

For me the best solution was covered in this blog post. It will only work with Google accounts, and assumes you're using UserService on the AppEngine side, but I think it works well. I hope it helps.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:02

Community

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answered Dec 18 '12 at 17:22

thomas88wp

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 14 '11 at 13:23

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Google uses OpenId while FB has its own thing. You'll need different codepaths for those two.

http://www.sozkan.com/blog/2010/09/24/very-quick-openid-integration-tutorial/

Granted - this relies on URLs to manage the data - you'll need to wrap this in your code if you want it all to happen internally. Once you have the token you can notify your server-side code of what it is, lifespan, etc.

Info on differences: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2010/11/04/facebook-connect-oauth-and-openid-the-differences-and-the-future/

answered Jul 14 '11 at 13:23

ethrbunny

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The question was exactly what is the procedure for a client-server app. For a web-based application this question does not persist, as the only work is done in a single place. Here it is another situation - the user is authenticated on the CLIENT, and the SERVER is not yet aware of that. So how do I actually notify him that the user is authenticated with a particular credentials and how to verify all this and so on and so on... – Djumaka Jul 15 '11 at 07:16
You would authenticate via the CLIENT and notify the SERVER once you got the go-ahead - OR - you would do it the other way around - have the client tell the server to authenticate and then send the result back to the client. Most server languages (PHP, JAVA, Perl,etc )support some sort of web communication ( eg Curl ) so that's one avenue for the authentication. Google might also offer a SOAP avenue too. – ethrbunny Jul 17 '11 at 13:06
Down-voted because HTTP-ing the URLs yourself, by hand, replicates the behavior of AccountManager, AND throws away Android's existing list of logged-in accounts. – Phlip Oct 07 '13 at 17:53

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 07 '13 at 18:15

Just to finish this (stale) question, and park my code snippet somewhere, I have started to log in with Google using a PreferenceScreen Activity with this onCreate() code:

    ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
    list.add("https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile");
    final GoogleAccountCredential credential = 
        GoogleAccountCredential.usingOAuth2(getApplicationContext(), list); 
    Preference acctValue = findPreference("GMail");  // A <Preference> in the XML...

    acctValue.setOnPreferenceClickListener(new OnPreferenceClickListener(){
        @Override
        public boolean onPreferenceClick(Preference preference) {
            startActivityForResult(credential.newChooseAccountIntent(), 1);
            return false;
        }
    });

And they required adding these shady characters to my libs folder:

google-api-client-android-1.17.0-rc.jar
google-play-services.jar
google-api-client-1.17.0-rc.jar
google-http-client-1.17.0-rc.jar

Using Google account as Login... what next?

3 Answers3

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