REST User Authentication

The PAS REST service has built in user authentication that can be enabled to prevent users from calling specific methods such as GET, PUT, POST, & DELETE. Once user authentication has been enabled all calls to the server will need to be authenticated by passing through the user name and password within the REST call.

Note: When user authentication is enabled the HTML PDF Viewer/Notes will prompt with a dialog for the REST authentication credentials before the document is served. If the document also has an "Open Password" the user will be prompted twice, first for the REST server and then again for the document password.

Setting up REST User Authentication

To enable user authentication follow the steps below.

Stop the PAS service
- Windows: Use the Windows Service Manager to stop the "QoppaPAS" service or using the command prompt navigate to the installation directory and enter the following command "QoppaPAS.exe -stop"
- Linux/Unix/Mac: Navigate to the installation directory and stop the daemon service by using "QoppaPAS stop" or "sudo service QoppaPAS stop"
Navigate to the installation directory and locate the "rest-users.xml" and open it in any xml/text editor
Replace the sample users with the users for your server. Create each user on a separate line using the following format: <user username="user" password="password" roles="roles" /> replacing "user" with the user name, "password" with the password for the user, and "roles" with REST call methods that the user has permission to separated by commas (i.e. GET, POST, PUT). See the example at the bottom of this page.
- Note: Make sure to remove the comment out tags "" and examples included in the initial installation file
Start the PAS service
- Windows: Use the Windows Service Manager to start the "QoppaPAS" service or using the command prompt navigate to the installation directory and enter the following command "QoppaPAS.exe -start"
- Linux/Unix/Mac: Navigate to the installation directory and start the daemon service by using "QoppaPAS start" or "sudo service QoppaPAS start"
Go to Preferences -> Rest and set the Authorizer setting to XML Users File
Click Save to apply the settings.

IMPORTANT: In order to enable the user authentication the service must be stopped and started. Modifying the "rest-users.xml" while the service is running will not load the user authentication changes as the user authentication is only loaded into the service at startup.

Example REST users

Below is an example showing how sample users added to the "rest-users.xml" file.

<users>

</users>