Set up authentication for your Amazon Location application - Amazon Location Service

Set up authentication for your Amazon Location application

The application that you create in this tutorial has anonymous usage, meaning that your users are not required to sign into AWS to use the application. However, by default, the Amazon Location Service APIs require authentication to use. You can use either Amazon Cognito or API keys to provide authentication and authorization for anonymous users. In this tutorial, you will create API keys for use in the sample application.

Note

For more information about using API keys or Amazon Cognito with Amazon Location Service, see Grant access to Amazon Location Service.

To set up authentication for your application

  1. Go to the Amazon Location console, and choose API keys from the left menu.

  2. Choose Create API key.

    Important

    The API key that you create must be in the same AWS account and AWS Region as the Amazon Location Service resources that you created in the previous section.

  3. One the Create API key page, fill in the following information.

    • Name – A name for your API key, such as MyWebAppKey.

    • Resources – Choose the Amazon Location Map and Place index resources that you created in the previous section. You can add more than one resource by choosing Add resource. This will allow the API key to be used with those resources.

    • Actions – Specify the actions you want to authorize with this API key. You must select at least geo:GetMap* and geo:SearchPlaceIndexfForPosition so that the tutorial will work as expected.

    • You can optionally add a Description, Expiration time, or Tags to your API key. You can also add a referrer (such as *.example.com), to limit the key to only being used from a particular domain. This will mean that the tutorial will only work from that domain.

      Note

      It is recommended that you protect your API key usage by setting either an expiration time or a referrer, if not both.

  4. Choose Create API key to create the API key.

  5. Choose Show API key, and copy the key value for use later in the tutorial. It will be in the form v1.public.a1b2c3d4....

    Important

    You will need this key when writing the code for your application later in this tutorial.