The Fuel indexer's authentication functionality offers users a range of options for verifying their identity. The system supports any arbitrary authentication scheme (in theory); however, in practice the service defaults to JWT authentication due to its stateless nature and popularity.
To authenticate using JWT, users ask an indexer operator for a nonce, sign that nonce with their wallet, then send both the nonce and signature to the indexer operator for verification. Once the signature is verified on the backend, a valid JWT is produced and returned to the user, thus authenticating the user.
It is important to note that authentication is disabled by default. However, if authentication is enabled, users will need to authenticate before performing operations that involve modifying the state of the service, such as uploading indexers.
The new authentication functionality offers a flexible and secure way for users to authenticate and perform operations that affect the service's state.
Below is a demonstration of basic JWT authentication using an indexer operator at "https://beta-4-indexer.fuel.network "
forc index auth --url https://beta-4-indexer.fuel.network:29987You will first be prompted for the password for your wallet:
Please enter your wallet password:After successfully entering your wallet password you should be presented with your new JWT token.
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Successfully authenticated at https://beta-4-indexer.fuel.network:29987/api/auth/signature.
Token: eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiODNlNjhiOTFmNDhjYWM4M.... Use this token in your Authorization headers when making requests for operations such as uploading indexers, stopping indexers, and other operations that mutate state in this way.
Users can just pass this JWT token value to the --auth flag, if using forc index commands that support authentication (e.g., forc index deploy --auth $MY_JWT_TOKEN).