[Feature]: External connections API

[MarkMpn]

Provide an idea you would like to see in the tool?

To avoid each member of a team having to have a set of connections to different instances configured, it would be very helpful to be able to configure a URL of an API which can return a list of connections. This API could be authenticated via OAuth, both to protect access to it and also to allow it to dynamically filter the list of connections depending on the identity of the user requesting it. This list would contain only the basic details of the connection to allow it to be identified by the user, and not any of the authentication information such as client id/secret.

After selecting a connection from the list to connect to, a separate API call would be made to retrieve the required authentication details. The API could then display some more UI to prompt for more information, e.g. a data access request to justify why the user requires access to this connection. The API would then return the information required for PPTB to authenticate the connection. This could be just an access token so that the client id/secret is never exposed to the user.

This system allows a central list of connections to be managed within an organization without having to share secrets with each user, which would then need to be rotated when a staff member leaves. It also allows the API to maintain an audit trail of when each user accessed each instance.

Relevant log output

[MattBerg11]

Hi @MarkMpn! Thanks for the feature request here. You will be very happy to hear that in our most recent insider releases, we have Connection Import/Export - Compatible with an existing XTB XML file, and a PPTB JSON file. Please review the links below and let us know if there is anything additional you would like with this (Go ahead and comment on the feature), otherwise I'll go ahead and close it as a duplicate tomorrow morning.

Original feature request: #336
The PR: #444

[MarkMpn]

That allows users to share connections, and the conversion from XTB connection files will be very useful, but still keeps the management of those connections and any secrets local to PPTB. The difference that having the connection details exposed via an external API would make would be to allow those connections to be managed centrally and keep any secrets away from the PPTB user. A similar pattern is available today in XTB by adding a .NET assembly instead of an XML file as the connection list file - XTB then finds any IConnectionListProvider implementations in that assembly and uses them to get the connections dynamically.

In our business, customers can register connections to their instances via an online portal and all the connection details are held securely in SQL + Key Vault. By exposing these connections via an authenticated API to our internal users we have made XTB a key piece of our workflow as those connections are immediately available to appropriate users based on their roles and which projects they are working on, while also maintaining a full audit log of who has accessed which connections. This central management and auditing is not possible if the connection details are stored in static files.

[MattBerg11]

Thanks for the extra context @MarkMpn, I have flipped it to discussion needed and pinged the team for their thoughts.