Magento customer authentication via API

Question

I am using Magento with a 3rd party Java Web Application. My application is "connected" to Magento via Magento SOAP API V2.

How can I perform a Customer Authentication from my Java aplication (outside of Magento) via api?

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I came up to a solution on how to login a customer via SOAP API and I will post it here so it can be helpful for others.Here is what I did to make it work:

1. I created a custom module in Magento with a custom method that login a customer and retuns the sessionID that is set on server side.

   Mage::app()->setCurrentStore($website);
   // Init a Magento session. This is super ultra important
   Mage::getSingleton('core/session'); 
   
   // $customer Mage_Customer_Model_Customer
   // We get an instance of the customer model for the actual website
   $customer = Mage::getModel('customer/customer')
       ->setWebsiteId(Mage::app()->getStore()->getWebsiteId());
   
   // Load the client with the appropriate email
   $customer->loadByEmail($email);
   
   // Get a customer session
   $session = Mage::getSingleton('customer/session');
   
   $session->loginById($customer->getId());
     if ($session->isLoggedIn()) {
       return $session->getSessionId();
   } else {
        return null;
   }
   

2. I created a Magento Custom Api so I can call my login method via SOAP.

3. Call the login method from my JAVA app, get the sessionId, then set the cookies on the browser, based on received sessionId. http://yourmagentohost/setCookies.php?sessionId=your_session_id

And inside setCookies.php you have: setcookie("frontend", $_GET["sessionId"] , time()+3600);

That's it, now you have a logged in customer.