Interactive Login from a Desktop Application

Overview

Interactive login is to be used when the user is present to login (for example, 3rd Party Desktop Applications) and will manage any additional information required at login depending upon a customer's account (such as 2 Factor Authentication codes or National Identifiers). 

This is achieved by embedding the Betfair IdentitySSO login page in your application and then obtaining a successful session token upon login. The keep alive operation should be called every 7 minutes if the user is still actively using your application. The embedded login page initially looks like this:

You should be able to detect the presence of a session token in the requests upon successful login for use by your application.

Interface

Login

URL definition

International users:

Spanish jurisdiction users:

Italian jurisdiction users:

Parameters

Keep alive

The presence of the "Accept: application/json" header will signal that the service should respond with JSON and not an HTML page

Headers

Response structure

{
  "token":"<token_passed_as_header>",
  "product":"product_passed_as_header",
  "status":"<status>",
  "error":"<error>"
}

# full request
curl -k -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "X-Application: AppKey" -H "X-Authentication: <token>" https://identitysso.betfair.com/api/keepAlive

Logout

The presence of the "Accept: application/json" header will signal that the service should respond with JSON and not an HTML page

Headers

Response structure

{
  "token":"<token_passed_as_header>",
  "product":"product_passed_as_header",
  "status":"<status>",
  "error":"<error>"
}

Error values

Call sample

# full request
curl -k -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "X-Application: AppKey" -H "X-Authentication: <token>" https://identitysso.betfair.com/api/logout

Sample Code

A sample client, written in C#, is available to demonstrate this process on Github.  This is a C# project created under Visual Studio 2010, written against .Net 4, and is a Winforms Application.

The key steps demonstrated by this client are:

• Embed identitysso.betfair.com into your application
• Handle the login method and retrieval of a session token from the cookies
• Handle the keep alive method
• Handle the logout method

How it works

Upon start-up, the URL of the API login page is assigned to the web browser control:

//Give embedded web browser Betfair api login page URL         

System.Uri u = new Uri(LogonURL);

When the web browser control receives data an event is triggered and the following function called: 

private void webBrowser1_DocumentCompleted(object sender, WebBrowserDocumentCompletedEventArgs e)
{
            //On embeded web browser response get cookie
            string cookie = this.webBrowser1.Document.Cookie;

            if (cookie != null)
                this.ParseCookie(cookie);

            //If successfull login start KeepAlive 
            if (!m_LoggedOut && !m_KeepAliveTimer.Enabled)
            {
                webBrowser1.Visible = false;
                SetMessage("Logon successfull\r\n SSOID=" + m_SSOID);

                
                this.StartKeepAlive();
            }
}

Upon successful login the cookie is parsed for the SSOID. The webrowser control made invisible and the SSOID displayed in a TextBox. The keep-alive timer is started

private void StartKeepAlive()
	{            
            m_KeepAliveTimer.Elapsed += new System.Timers.ElapsedEventHandler(OnKeepAliveTimer);
            // Set the Interval to 15 mins.
            m_KeepAliveTimer.Interval = 1000 * 60 * 15;
            m_KeepAliveTimer.Enabled = true;
        }

Above the StartKeepAlive function simply starts a 15 minute timer which invokes function OnKeepAliveTimer. 

OnKeepAliveTimer sends a Keep Alive message.

A message to this effect is then displayed.

Upon hitting the Logout button the following event handler is invoked:

private void btnLogout_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            m_KeepAliveTimer.Enabled = false;
            m_KeepAliveTimer.Close();
            m_LoggedOut = true;

            System.Uri u = new Uri(LogoutURL);
            this.webBrowser1.Url = u;
            this.webBrowser1.Navigate(u);

            SetMessage("Logged out");

        }

The keep alive timer is closed. The logout url is sent and a Logged out message is displayed.