I'm trying to replace the deprecated FME Token Service in our data download tool with the FMEServer Rest API but I can't see in the token methods how to include the username/password to create the token. How can I do this? Thanks.

You probably want to check the article Token Management in FME Server 2019.

The FME Token Service section on that page refers back to the REST API but doesn't mention anything else so I'm still not sure how you pass in the username/password to return a token.

Hi @Peter Baldwin​ ,

While we recommend using a token for security reasons, you can use Basic Authentication with any endpoint in the REST API.

If you were to use Postman or the HTTPCaller transformer in FME then there is a section for Basic Auth where you can just enter your username/password but this type of authentication can also be set up using a Header:

1. combine your username and password with a colon e.g. admin:admin
2. encode this string as Base64 e.g. YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=
3. Set the Header using this string e.g.

Authorization: Basic YWRtaW46YWRtaW4=

I'll go and update that article to include this information!

Thanks, I'll give this a try.

I would prefer to use a token but I don't understand how the token can be related to the user i.e. how can you ensure that only certain users can run the data download tool and if an unauthorised user tries to run it they will hit an error.

Also, is this information now out of date: https://playground.fmeserver.com/getting-started/authentication/ as it mentions the deprecated service. Is there an up to date version of this documentation?

I was just looking into the same myself and was expecting to find a REST endpoint that generates a token from a username/password (as per the ArcGIS Server REST API) that can then be used for subsequent requests. It seems like the recommended way is to manually generate a long-lived API token, which to me seems less secure as anyone that got hold of the token could use it to authenticate.

The API endpoints for creating a token seem to assume you are alread authenticated as don't have username/password parameters. The only other way seems to be to use Basic Authentication to log in and then use the create token endpoints, but basic authentication is very insecure as user/password are sent in plain text.

This all seems to be a fairly major flaw in the authentication via REST and doesn't fit at all well with what we are trying to do, which is automate things using scripts that use credentials from a key vault. If using HTTPS, then having a "createToken" end point that accepts username/password/expiry with POST only would not be any less secure than manually generating a storing and using a long-lived token. I would argue it would be more secure!

@john_gis4bus​ 

The token service allows you to create tokens on demand, albeit short-lived: https://community.safe.com/s/article/token-management-in-fme-server#TokenService

However, I did notice that the article's token service instructions are somewhat brief. You can make a post request to the token service, by sending username/password via the body, to receive a temporary token, e.g.

POST http://<fmeserver>/fmetoken/generate ...

The downsides to this solution are as listed in the article: these tokens can no longer be updated or retrieved after creation. As well, session tokens are potentially more insecure, as they have unrestricted permissions. Whereas, an API token allows for granular control over permissions.

Either way, there might not be a perfect solution for your requirements at this time. But I saw you submitted an idea for the request, thank you! I'll link it here in case anyone stumbles upon this post and would like to vote or comment on the idea: https://community.safe.com/s/bridea/a0rDm000001QJchIAG/fme-serverflow-generate-token-via-rest-api