Moving Yahoo IDP support from OpenID2 to OAuth2

[Adam Dawes]

Hi Identity Toolkit community,

We have just enabled OAuth2 support for Yahoo IDP with Identity Toolkit. Yahoo prefers that developers do authentication via their OAuth2 APIs instead of using OpenID because of security benefits as well as simplifying the experience for users and developers.

We also wanted to notify everyone that we will be deprecating OpenID2 support for Yahoo and will be turning off support for that authentication path on May 15, 2016. If you currently use Yahoo as an IDP, migration is simple:

1. Follow these instructions to enable your Yahoo app. You should register as a website using your widget_url.
   
2. Once you have registered you app, copy the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret to the Identity Toolkit configuration page.
   
3. Add "yahoo" to the idps field in the config variable for your javascript widget.
   
4. Set the roll-out percentage in the settings console as appropriate. Be sure to click "save" when you are done.
   

Please let us know if you have any comments by replying to this list. If you have any technical questions, please post them on Stack Overflow.

--

Adam Dawes | Sr. Product Manager | ada...@google.com | +1 650-214-2410

[Brian]

Thanks for the info, Adam!

I tried to get this migration for my app started by requesting a Yahoo Consumer key and secret, but the link returns an error message:

An internal error occurred (eid 6275237).

I also tried to visit the Yahoo forum to request help, but it only returns an empty page with their common header and footer, and no content.

I've tried to do this over two days now, without success.

Does anyone know what's up with Yahoo? Are they having prolonged issues with their services?

(Sigh!)

[Ying Hao]

Assuming that you are registering you App at: https://developer.yahoo.com/apps/

What happens if you ignore the error message and click on "My Apps" which is located right below the error message?

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Identity Toolkit" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-identity-t...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Brian]

Thanks for the great clues, Ying!

After a few tries, I was finally able to get this working. Here's a recap for others that may have similar issues:

Sign-in to your Yahoo account, click the "MyApps" menu and choose "YDN Apps". Create an app. Choose your "Application Name" carefully, because it will be displayed in the sign-in widget. The "Home Page URL" should be your wigetUrl. Be sure to check the "API Permissions" you need, such as "Profiles (Social Directory)" because once you create your app, there is no way to edit your selection(s). Not selecting anything seems to leave your app in a useless state.

While all the "API Permissions" selections are (presumably) linked to help page descriptions, unfortunately (at least for me) they lead to empty pages with the Yahoo common header and footer, and no content except for the message: An internal error occurred (eid 9411515).

Some of the Yahoo pages contain seemingly useful links, but don't go anywhere, at least for me. For example:

As with OAuth 1.0 you must first sign up and get both a Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.
https://developer.yahoo.com/oauth/guide/oauth-auth-flow.html#oauth-consumerkey

Questions and suggestions on the OAuth API are discussed on the Yahoo OAuth Developer Community forum. 
https://developer.yahoo.com/forums/#/categories/oauth-and-openid

Sometimes these pages display a "Yahoo has engineers working on the problem..." message. 

Good luck all!

[Ying Hao]

Great to hear that it is working for you now, :-).

--