Playground for OAuth 2.0 launched by Google

Google has set out to make it easier for developers to get to grips with the OAuth 2.0 authentication technology by opening a playground for them to experiment in.

OAuth 2.0 Playground allows developers to walk through each step of the OAuth 2.0 workflow for server-side web applications: selecting the APIs to authorise, exchanging authorisation tokens, refreshing access tokens and sending authorised requests to API endpoints. Throughout the step-by-step process, the playground displays the full HTTP request and responses for each API.

OAuth 2.0 is the latest version of the OAuth protocol, focusing on ease of development with specific authorisation mechanisms for web, desktop and mobile devices. Google announced in March 2011 that it was starting to support OAuth 2.0 for its APIs and encouraged its developers to switch to OAuth 2.0 in all applications.

Developers need a secure and standard way to access resources when developing applications for the web and mobile devices. In the past, OAuth has been difficult for developers to work with, version 2.0 has made this easier and it is hoped that Google's playground will help developers get a deeper understanding of this important standard.

(lcz)