Connecting to Admin secured webservice on App Engine from Java client

Question

I've got a simple Java tool that I use for calling webservices on App Engine to help me with maintenance and management. I currently secure the pages by only allowing admin access using the web.xml file and

<security-constraint>
    <web-resource-collection>
        <web-resource-name>xxxxxx</web-resource-name>
        <url-pattern>/xxxxxx</url-pattern>
    </web-resource-collection>
    <auth-constraint>
        <role-name>admin</role-name>
    </auth-constraint>
</security-constraint>

Which is fine when making calls from a browser as it goes through the authentication process, but if I want to access the page using a Java client what should my approach be?

Answer 1

Typically, each of your requests must contain credentials that allow it to be executed. All requests without such credentials are rejected.

In the most simple form, you can include a client-secret - a long random string that is very hard to guess - with your requests. Your code will include this secret, while requests from outside won't know to include it.

For a more secure/robust implementation you may look at an existing library , but it may be too much for a simple tool.