Varnish integration

Using Varnish and the JavaScript SDK, clients can implement paywalls with Schibsted account with relative ease and little custom server-side logic - Varnish will handle the negotiation and make the authorization requests to Schibsted account. Defering the authorization to Varnish means your server only needs to generate any page once and can cache it until it is changed. There's no need to regenerate pages for every unique user, as long as personalization is done with JavaScript on the frontend.

This page describes a custom module built by Varnish Software for Schibsted account, and is a paid product. If you are interested in this product, contact support.

When using the Varnish Schibsted account payment wall, the high-level flow is as follows:

  • A user visits your site
  • The JavaScript SDK sets a cookie in the user's browser, linking them to their Schibsted account user account (provided that they are logged in)
  • The user tries to access content behind a paywall
  • Varnish uses the cookie to ask Schibsted account if the user has access to the content
  • Varnish caches the response and allows/denies access (current and future ones) until the cache expires

Note that Varnish also has a generic paywall module that may be used with Schibsted account as well. This document only describes the Schibsted account-specific paywall module.

Implementing the Varnish Schibsted account paywall

Varnish Software will assist you with installing the Varnish module. The only action required on your end to implement this feature is to make sure that protected content includes the following headers:

X-SP-Access-Control: subscription
X-SP-Pids: 55,98
X-SP-Auth-Failed: /sport/article34232.ece?preview=true

X-SP-Access-Control

This is the header that decides whether the object being served is protected or not. If it contains the phrase subscription, Varnish will assume the object is protected, and go on to inspect the two other headers. If this header does not contain subscription, the object is served directly.

X-SP-Pids

This header contains the product IDs that the user needs access to in order to view the content. It may be a single alphanumeric ID, or a comma-separated list of IDs.

X-SP-Auth-Failed

This is a URL where the user may be redirected if they do not have access to the protected content. In the above example, the user will be redirected to a preview of the article they are attempting to view if they don't have an active subscription giving them access to the full article.

When using the Varnish Schibsted account paywall, authorization requests are made by the paywall module. Varnish uses the SP_ID cookie, which is encrypted and set by the JavaScript SDK. When using the paywall module, you must also use the JavaScript SDK, otherwise, users will not be recognized, and thus not given access to anything.

The SP_ID cookie value may be retrieved from the API through the /user/{userId}/varnishId endpoint.

Enabling Varnish

Varnish support is not enabled by default. It needs to be enable per client. This setting can be enabled in Selfservice.

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