I’m looking at building a simple web app that will expose an API that lets third-party (well, written by me, but that’s not the point) apps query for and modify user-specific data stored on the site.
Obviously I don’t want to allow apps to be able to get user-specific information without that users consent. I would want some kind of application authentication where users allow an application they run to use the web API to access their information.
Is there a standard way to achieve this or does every app (i.e. rememberthemilk) just hack up a bespoke solution specifically for them?
Will OAuth work for you? That’s the problem it was designed to solve.