Documentation
A simple plugin to add JSON Web Token (JWT) Authentication to the WP REST API. Based on the plugin by Tmeister which now seems abandoned. This plugin has been almost completely rewritten from the ground up and should be 100% compatible with the WordPress-Core PHP standard using Tigerton plugin boilerplate.
- Rewritten with a new plugin structure and 100% compatibility with WordPress-Core PHP standards.
- Active development (not abandoned)
- Adds new endpoints for more functionality. For example to revoke (log out) a token and to request new password email.
- Adds user meta for all tokens connecting to the login token (internal to WordPress).
- Adds an UI for viewing and revoking all tokens. Also show latest usage, IP and user agent.
- Adds a settings page inside WP admin as an alternative to the constants in
wp-config.php.
To know more about JSON Web Tokens, please visit http://jwt.io.
This plugin was conceived to extend the WP REST API V2 plugin features and, of course, was built on top of it.
So, to use the Simple JWT Authentication you need to install and activate WP REST API.
Minimum PHP version: 5.3.0
Most of the shared hosts have disabled the HTTP Authorization Header by default.
To enable this option you'll need to edit your .htaccess file by adding the following:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Authorization} ^(.*)
RewriteRule ^(.*) - [E=HTTP_AUTHORIZATION:%1]
To enable this option you'll need to edit your .htaccess file by adding the following:
SetEnvIf Authorization "(.*)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1
Download the zip file and install it like any other WordPress plugin.
Or clone this repo into your WordPress installation into the wp-content/plugins folder.
The JWT needs a secret key to sign the token. This secret key must be unique and never revealed.
To add the secret key, either visit the Simple JWT Authentication settings page or edit your wp-config.php file and add a new constant called SIMPLE_JWT_AUTHENTICATION_SECRET_KEY.
define('SIMPLE_JWT_AUTHENTICATION_SECRET_KEY', 'your-top-secret-key');You can use a string from here https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/salt/
The Simple JWT Authentication plugin has the option to activate CORS support.
To enable the CORS Support either visit the Simple JWT Authentication settings page or edit your wp-config.php file and add a new constant called SIMPLE_JWT_AUTHENTICATION_CORS_ENABLE
define('SIMPLE_JWT_AUTHENTICATION_CORS_ENABLE', true);Finally activate the plugin within the plugin dashboard.
When the plugin is activated, a new namespace is added.
/simple-jwt-authentication/v1
Also, a few new endpoints are added to this namespace.
| Endpoint | HTTP Verb |
|---|---|
| /wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token | POST |
| /wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate | POST |
| /wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/revoke | POST |
| /wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/resetpassword | POST |
This is the entry point for the JWT Authentication.
Validates the user credentials, username and password, and returns a token to use in a future request to the API if the authentication is correct or error if the authentication fails.
Success response from the server:
{
"token": "eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpc3MiOiJodHRwOlwvXC9qd3QuZGV2IiwiaWF0IjoxNDM4NTcxMDUwLCJuYmYiOjE0Mzg1NzEwNTAsImV4cCI6MTQzOTE3NTg1MCwiZGF0YSI6eyJ1c2VyIjp7ImlkIjoiMSJ9fX0.YNe6AyWW4B7ZwfFE5wJ0O6qQ8QFcYizimDmBy6hCH_8",
"user_display_name": "admin",
"user_email": "admin@localhost.dev",
"user_nicename": "admin",
"user_id": 1,
"token_expires": 12000
}Error response from the server:
{
"code": "jwt_auth_failed",
"data": {
"status": 403
},
"message": "Invalid Credentials."
}Once you get the token, you must store it somewhere in your application, e.g. in a cookie or using localstorage.
From this point, you should pass this token to every API call.
var request = new Request(apiURL + '/wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate', {
method: 'POST',
headers: new Headers({
'Content-Type': 'application/json',
'authorization': 'Bearer ' + user.token
})
})
fetch(request).then(response => {
response.json().then(results => {
if (results.data.status !== 200) {
callback(false)
} else {
callback(true)
}
})
}).catch(function (err) {
callback(err)
})var settings = {
"async": true,
"crossDomain": true,
"url": "http://sample.com/wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate",
"method": "POST",
"headers": {
"bearer": "token",
"cache-control": "no-cache",
}
}
$.ajax(settings).done(function (response) {
console.log(response);
});<?php
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_URL => "http://sample.com/wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate",
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "POST",
CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
"bearer: token",
"cache-control: no-cache",
),
));
$response = curl_exec($curl);
$err = curl_error($curl);
curl_close($curl);
if ($err) {
echo "cURL Error #:" . $err;
} else {
echo $response;
}curl -X POST \
http://sample.com/wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate \
-H 'bearer: token' \
-H 'cache-control: no-cache' \
var http = require("http");
var options = {
"method": "POST",
"hostname": "sample.com",
"port": null,
"path": "/wp-json/simple-jwt-authentication/v1/token/validate",
"headers": {
"bearer": "token",
"cache-control": "no-cache",
}
};
var req = http.request(options, function (res) {
var chunks = [];
res.on("data", function (chunk) {
chunks.push(chunk);
});
res.on("end", function () {
var body = Buffer.concat(chunks);
console.log(body.toString());
});
});
req.end();The Simple JWT Authentication will intercept every call to the server and will look for the authorization header, if the authorization header is present, it will try to decode the token and will set the user according with the data stored in it.
If the token is valid, the API call flow will continue as always.
Sample Headers
POST /resource HTTP/1.1
Host: server.example.com
Authorization: Bearer mF_s9.B5f-4.1JqM
If the token is invalid an error will be returned. Here are some samples of errors:
Invalid Credentials
[
{
"code": "jwt_auth_failed",
"message": "Invalid Credentials.",
"data": {
"status": 403
}
}
]Invalid Signature
[
{
"code": "jwt_auth_invalid_token",
"message": "Signature verification failed",
"data": {
"status": 403
}
}
]Expired Token
[
{
"code": "jwt_auth_invalid_token",
"message": "Expired token",
"data": {
"status": 403
}
}
]This is a simple helper endpoint to validate a token; you only will need to make a POST request sending the Authorization header.
Valid Token Response:
{
"code": "jwt_auth_valid_token",
"data": {
"status": 200
}
}The wp-api-jwt-auth is dev friendly and has five filters available to override the default settings.
The jwt_auth_cors_allow_headers allows you to modify the available headers when the CORs support is enabled.
Default Value:
'Access-Control-Allow-Headers, Content-Type, Authorization'
The jwt_auth_not_before allows you to change the nbf value before the token is created.
Default Value:
Creation time - time()
The jwt_auth_expire allows you to change the value exp before the token is created.
Default Value:
time() + (DAY_IN_SECONDS * 7)
The jwt_auth_token_before_sign allows you to modify all the token data before to be encoded and signed.
Default value:
<?php
$token = array(
'uuid' => wp_generate_uuid4(),
'iss' => get_bloginfo('url'),
'iat' => $issuedAt,
'nbf' => $notBefore,
'exp' => $expire,
'data' => array(
'user' => array(
'id' => $user->data->ID,
)
)
);The jwt_auth_token_before_dispatch allows you to modify all the response array before to dispatch it to the client.
Default value:
<?php
$data = array(
'user_id' => $user->ID,
'token' => $token,
'user_email' => $user->data->user_email,
'user_nicename' => $user->data->user_nicename,
'user_display_name' => $user->data->display_name,
'token_expires' => $expire,
);