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Re: [OAUTH-WG] Defining a maximum token length?

jbemmel@zonnet.nl Fri, 19 March 2010 12:44 UTC

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Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:44:13 +0100
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Subject: Re: [OAUTH-WG] Defining a maximum token length?
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Hi,

It appears that people agree excessive token length could be an issue 
for interoperability, but opinions vary on how long tokens 
could/should/must be. Relatively long tokens will occur when encoding 
data associated with the user (access rights, group memberships, etc.), 
and integrity protection / encryption techniques (relevant when tokens 
would be transmitted using plain HTTP) could also lead to long tokens.

Instead of agreeing/standardizing on a limit for token lengths, how 
about specifying a parameter in which the client declares the maximum 
token length it can accept? That way, at least potential interop 
problems due to long tokens can be detected; the Authentication server 
can subsequently return an error response if the token it would issue 
exceeds the client's max length

Regards,
Jeroen

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