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Introduction

Basics

  • Examples are in JavaScript on a Node/Express server with request installed.
  • Request and responses are in JSON
  • API responses are the base resource being created/referenced. So, for example, all routes starting with /api/users return User resources.

Client Setup

We currently do not have a way for you to create or set up your own API Client or OAuth Provider information. Please contact us directly to get started.

Client Authentication

API routes must be called with Basic HTTP Authentication. You will receive a username (CLIENT_ID) and password (CLIENT_SECRET) upon creation of your API Client in our system. Provide those credentials with each API request.

url = 'https://codecombat.com/api/users'
json = { name: 'A username' }
auth = { name: CLIENT_ID, pass: CLIENT_SECRET }
request.get({ url, json, auth }, (err, res) => console.log(res.statusCode, res.body))

We strongly recommend using a secrets manager for storing your client secret. Plain text files like dotenv lead to accidental, costly leaks. Use Doppler for a developer-friendly experience. AWS and Google Cloud have native solutions as well.

User Authentication

To authenticate a user on CodeCombat through your service, you will need to use the below OAuth 2 process. CodeCombat will act as the client, and your service will act as the provider. First, you will need to provide a trusted lookup URL and/or a token URL for the setup(See Client Setup above). Then the process from user account creation to log in will look like this:

  1. Create the user using POST /api/users.
  2. Link the CodeCombat user to an OAuth identity using POST /api/users/:handle/o-auth-identities. You can call this API with a code or an access token. If no access token is given, we will use the token URL to exchange the given code for an access token. Then we call the lookup URL with the access token to receive the user information (id) from your system which is saved to the user in our db.
  3. Log the user in by redirecting them to /auth/login-o-auth. You can call this API with the code/access token, and we will get the user information from your system similarly to step 2. Finally, we match this information with what is stored in our database in step 2. If everything checks out, the user is logged in and redirected to the home page.

There is also a concrete example depicting the above process for better understanding. You can also refer to this diagram.