Choosing a user management and authentication scenario

When using finAPI, you can implement the user management and authentication model in your application in one of several ways:

1. Using finAPI as your application's user management and authentication model (recommended)

• your application reduces its own logics for the user management and authentication to a minimum, and instead delegates most of the logics to finAPI
• Your application's users are not separated from finAPI's users, but are actually the same users
• The user logs in to your application via finAPI (there are no separate user credentials for your application)
• User credentials are not stored in your application (only usernames, and maybe something like an email address for verification)
• As a result, the complexity of your application decreases, and at the same time the security of user data increases
• For more details on how to implement this scenario, see the article: Using finAPI as authentication provider

2. Using the same user credentials for your application and finAPI

• Your application has its own user management (user credentials are stored in your application)
• However, the users' credentials in your application match the user credentials in finAPI
• for finAPI authentication, your application just forwards its own user credentials to finAPI
• but your users can log into your application without finAPI being involved

3. Separate user management and authentication models for your application and finAPI

• Your application's user management and authentication is completely decoupled from finAPI
• For creating users in finAPI, your application can choose any credentials (which can be different to this user's credentials for your application)
• you can even let finAPI generate random usernames and passwords
• your application has to store the users' credentials for both your application and for finAPI