You need a valid coreBOS user to access the webservice. All the operations you can do through the REST interface will be limited by the coreBOS permission system of the connected user.

The REST API does not use the users password to connect. Instead it needs the user's access key which is a unique identifier created for each user that can be found in the user's preferences page.

The login operation establishes a session between the REST client and the coreBOS application, validates the user and returns a session identifier which must be used in all subsequent calls to coreBOS.

This login process is done in two steps, first we ask coreBOS for a challenge sequence and then we use the returned string to encode our access key for the final validation.

GetChallengeResult{
token:String //challenge string
serverTime:TimeStamp //time on server
expireTime:TimeStamp //expire time of token
}

http://corebos_url/webservice.php?operation=getchallenge&username=[username]

If you call this function you will see nothing on screen as we have just received a string value and saved it in the $challengeToken. Try executing it with debugcall=1 parameter in the browser.

Now that we have the challenge token we can proceed with the login step. For this we have to send the user name and a verification string. This verification string can be constructed in two ways:

• as an md5 encrypted string of the challenge token plus the user's access key
• as a the concatenation of the token string plus the user's password

This operation is executed as POST

LoginResult{
sessionId:String //unique session identifier
userId:String //application user webserivce ID
version:String //Webservice interface version
vtigerVersion:String //coreBOS version
}

http://corebos_url/webservice.php?operation=login&username=[username]&accessKey=[accessKey]

Once these two steps have been taken we can continue by calling any of the webservice functions.

• This method of authentication is called Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol and it is more secure than a username/password authentication. Read here for more information