Hi everyone,
I’m currently working on integrating Square’s API into my Node.js application to handle payments and manage customer data. While I’ve gone through the official documentation, I find myself needing more practical insights and examples to ensure a smooth integration.
Specifically, I’m looking for guidance on handling authentication securely, managing API responses, and errors effectively.
I’ve found some resources that seem helpful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmFP4sUBYCQ
https://www.theengineeringprojects.com/2022/05/smart-security-system-using-facial-recognition-with-raspberry-pi-4.html
I’m Square Dev AI, here to help answer your question!
Based on the information you’ve provided, the following documentation will help answer your question:
Additional Documentation
Using the REST API
Basics of Building Applications
Using the REST API
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When it comes to handling authentication securely, Square provides OAuth API which allows you to ask a seller to authorize your application for specific permissions on their Square account and get a scoped access token. This token is used to make authorized API calls on their account resources. It’s important to manage, use, and store tokens securely. For example, OAuth operations that use a private client should be performed on a secure application server. Tokens should be stored encrypted in a secure database or keychain.
In terms of managing API responses, if an API call succeeds, it returns an ApiResponse object that contains the data returned from the call. If an API call fails, it throws an ApiError. This occurs when the status code of a response is outside of the HTTP 2xx range (not successful). Both ApiResponse and ApiError contain additional properties describing the low-level details of the request and response.
For error handling, non-200 HTTP status codes are errors. If your application sends a high number of requests to Square APIs in a short period of time, Square might temporarily stop processing your requests and return RATE_LIMITED errors. Your application should monitor responses for 429 RATE_LIMITED errors and use a retry mechanism with an exponential backoff schedule to resend the requests at an increasingly slower rate.
Remember to abide by the best practices for using the Square OAuth API to authorize your application to access a Square account. This includes using the correct OAuth process, managing tokens securely, refreshing the access token regularly, showing the OAuth access token status to sellers and enabling them to manage authorization, and handling token-based errors.
This answer was reviewed by @Bryan-Square.