How to open SalesForce using the JWT method? - python

I have written a python script to make updates to SalesForce. However the issue is that I login to SalesForce using my username and password but this is a problem because my password changes regularly. I realize that I need to use the JWT method to avoid this. According to PyPi all I need to do is use simple salesforce and provide a private key and consumer key but I cannot figure out how to do this. I have made a connected app and associated it with a self signed certificate. Please advise on how I finish setting up this method.

You could have a dedicated user account for this with Profile flag that says password never expires. There would be a license cost, yes - but it'd work OK even if you leave company and the updates done by "Mr Admin" can look better to end users than by "Brian". Do you get any "why have you changed my data!!!" angry emails? ;)
But if you really need the JWT route these should help:
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=remoteaccess_oauth_jwt_flow.htm&type=5
https://gist.github.com/booleangate/30d345ecf0617db0ea19c54c7a44d06f (Python example but read the comments, I had to pip install pyjwt, not jwt)
https://salesforce.stackexchange.com/questions/201636/authentication-using-jwt/201648 (Apex example, 2 versions of code, raw HTTP requests or using built-in JWT libraries)

Related

Automate OneDrive Authentication with AAD MFA with python

I'm finding a way to automate the authentication from AAD with python.
In the past i used username and password for login to OneDrive and it worked properly. Here is the code:
pca = msal.PublicClientApplication(CLIENT_ID, authority=AUTHORITY_URL)
token = pca.acquire_token_by_username_password(USERNAME, PASSWORD, SCOPES)
Now, that i have two factor authentication i cannot use the same code to access OneDrive account.
I've searched the internet but all the solutions that i found requires to open the browser, and i can't do this because python script is a chronjob and runs in the late night. I need a solution that works in "background" without any action required.
Possibly it's better if there is a solution with MSAL library due to some permissions that i should request if i would change the library.
Thanks for the help!
You might consider using the Client-Credentials Grant flow or OAuth2. You would have to modify your cronjob to move away from fetching a token on behalf of the user and update it to acquire a token as the application using the application's identity (the app registration done in AAD). Upgrading to client-credentials flow, which is actually designed for scenarios similar to yours, will help you in situations where you cannot afford user interaction and you want the service to work in the backend.
For more information on Client-Credentials flow, check here.
Also, you can refer to the following python app that implements client-credentials flow:
Call Microsoft Graph API using App Client Secret
Call Microsoft Graph API using App Client Certificate:

How do I access the Salesforce API when single-sign on is enabled?

I'm attempting to make SOQL queries to the Salesforce API using the Python salesforce_api and simple-salesforce modules. I had been making these requests with a client object:
client = Salesforce(username='MY_USERNAME',
password='MY_PASSWORD',
security_token='MY_SALESFORCE_SECURITY_TOKEN')
a = client.query("SELECT something FROM some_object_table WHERE some_condition")
However, my company recently restricted Salesforce sign-in through SSO only (you used to be able to login directly to Salesforce without SSO), and the funciton is throwing either:
simple_salesforce.exceptions.SalesforceAuthenticationFailed: INVALID_SSO_GATEWAY_URL: the single sign on gateway url for the org is invalid
Or:
salesforce_api.exceptions.AuthenticationMissingTokenError: Missing or invalid security-token provided.
depending on which module I use. I suspect this is because of the SSO implementation.
I've seen the docs about creating a new app through Okta, but I need to authenticate and access the API of an existing app. What is the best way to access this API with Okta IdP enabled? It there a way to have a get request to Okta return an access token for Salesforce?
Uh. It's doable but it's an art. I'll try to write it up but you should have a look at "Identity and Access Management" Salesforce certification, study guides etc. Try also asking at salesforce.stackexchange.com, might get better answers and Okta specialists.
I don't know if there's pure server-side access to Okta where you'd provide OAuth2 client, secret, username and password and it'd be silently passed to login.
If your app is a proper web application that needs human to operate - you can still make it work with SSO. You'd have to read about OAuth2 in general (you saw it on the web, all the "login with Google/Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter/..." buttons) and then implement something like this or this. Human starts in your app, gets redirected to SF to enter username and password (you don't see password and you don't care whether he encountered normal SF login page or some SSO), on success he/she is redirected back and you receive info that'll let you obtain session id (sometimes called access token). Once you have access token you can make queries etc, it's just a matter of passing it as HTPP Authorization Bearer header (simple-salesforce docs mention session id at top of the examples).
Look, I know what I've written doesn't make much sense. Download Data Loader and try to use it. You might have to make it use custom domain on login but there is a way for it to still work, even though you have SSO enforced. Your goal would be to build similar app to how Data Loader does it. This might help a bit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/61820476/313628
If you need a true backend integration without human involved... tricky. That might be a management problem though. They should not enforce SSO on everybody. When Okta's down you're locked out of the org, no way to disable SSO. You should have a backup plan, some service account(s) that don't have SSO enforced. They might have crazy password requirements, maybe login only from office IP address, whatever. It's not a good idea to enforce SSO on everybody.
https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=sso_tips.htm
We recommend that you don’t enable SSO for Salesforce admins. If your
Salesforce admins are SSO users and your SSO server has an outage,
they have no way to log in to Salesforce. Make sure that Salesforce
admins can log in to Salesforce so that they can disable SSO if
problems occur.
(If you have a web app and it's embedded as Canvas in SF - there's another clean way to have the session id passed to you. Again - this works only if you have a human rather than backend integration)
If you check the profiles in SFDC and uncheck the box that requires SSO.
"is single sign-on Enabled [] Delegate username and password authentication to a corporate database instead of the salesforce.com user database. "

I don't know how to setup automail

I want to make a program in Python where is someone transfers money to my bankaccount,
i sent them a confirmation mail.
I don't know where to start and don't know how i can achieve this.
Mailjet provides such service. It has a free tier too. You can use it either posting request with requests.post or using pypi package here. The API documentation is also here.
As you may guess this is only for the mail service you asked. If the money transfer is a serious job, then the back end, transactions etc. requires some experience in that field.

How to setup authentication for Salesforce service

I'm building a python service that syncs data with Salesforce in both directions. To use the service, each user will have to authorise his own Salesforce account.
I've looked at Heroku Connect, but it doesn't seem to support a scenario where many different accounts can automatically be connected. Then looking at the API examples I noticed that almost always there is a user account as well as a password used in the request.
Being used to Gmail's APIs, I'm thinking if it is really necessary to ask for and save the user's password, or if there is another way to authenticate the requests. Requests will typically be initiated by the backend at random moments.
There's so much available from Salesforce that I am not sure where to start. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
You need to use the OAuth Web Flow to enable your app to make requests on behalf of a user. There is a Python utility to help with that: https://github.com/heroku/salesforce-oauth-request

Keep a secret key safe in Python

I am aware that these questions has been asked before several times separately, and most of the answers I've found are "Python is not easy to obfuscate, because that's the nature of the language. If you really need obfuscation, use another tool" and "At some point you need a tradeoff" (see How do I protect Python code and How to keep the OAuth consumer secret safe, and how to react when it's compromised?).
However, I have just made a small Python app which makes use of Twitter's API (and therefore needs OAuth). OAuth requires a Consumer Secret, which is to be kept away from users. The app needs that information, but the user should not be able to access it easily. If that information cannot be protected (and I am using obfuscation and protection as synonyms, because I do not know of any other way), what is the point of having a OAuth API for Python in the first place?
The question(s) then are:
Would it be possible to hardcode the secret in the app and then
obfuscate it in an effective manner?
If not, what would be the best way to use OAuth in Python? I have thought of "shipping" the encrypted consumer secret along with the app and using a hardcoded key to recover it, but the problem remains the same (how to protect the key); having the consumer secret in a server, and have the application retrieve it at start up (if information is sent unencrypted, it would be even easier for a malicious attacker to just use Wireshark and get the consumer secret from the network traffic than decompiling the bytecode, plus how could I make sure that I am sending that secret to my app and not to a malicious attacker? Any form of authentication I know would require having secret information in the app side, the problem remains the same); a mixture of both (have the server send the encryption key, same problems as before). The basic problem is the same: how can you have something secret if critical information cannot be hidden?
I have also seen comments saying that one should use a C/C++ extension for those critical parts, but I do not know anything about that, so if that were the answer, I'd appreciate some extra information.
If you want to deploy on servers (or laptop) you own, you can store secrets in env var or files. If you want to deploy to user, suggestion is that you, or your user should register an API key, generate ssl key, or similar.
You can code your own simple symetric crypt fucntion with a lot of data manipulation to make it harder to reverse.
It is unclear why you'd need to ship your OAuth key with the script. That would mean giving anyone access to your Twitter account, whether or not the key itself is obfuscated inside the app.
The more typical scenario is that you develop some Twitter client, and anyone who wants to run it locally will have to input their own OAuth token before being able to run it. You simply do not hardcode the token and require any user to supply the token.

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