Design and Function of the Internal Application Center for Token‑Based Authentication and Resource Access

The Application Center originated in 2013 to address the fragmented management of middleware applications, each with its own data and permissions, especially for scheduling tasks that required per‑task permission definitions.

Developers were required to add a qunar-app.properties file containing a unique application identifier, which the scheduling platform validated for uniqueness.

Later, the need for a dedicated system to manage application names and related permissions became evident for both the scheduling platform and the configuration center, leading to the creation of the Application Center with two main interfaces: applying for an application (receiving an encrypted token) and editing the application’s owners and developers.

To protect sensitive configuration data, the system introduced a two‑step verification: confirming the caller’s identity and checking its permission to operate. Identity verification is performed via digital signatures: the Application Center issues a server token encrypted with its private key, containing the app name, client IP, PID, and timestamp.

When an application requests configuration, it presents the server token; the configuration center decrypts it using the Application Center’s public key, validates the client IP, and extracts the app name to answer the “who am I” question.

This token‑based approach abstracts resource access from physical IP whitelists to logical app‑name permissions, enabling secure access to APIs, services, messages, and databases.

The Application Center also records basic application metadata such as used packages and versions, start/stop times, deployment path, JDK version, and log collection status, supporting the principle of trusting observable data over user‑provided information.

Summary: The Application Center maintains the relationships among applications, owners, and resources, providing identity verification, permission management, and metadata exposure to ensure secure and auditable resource access.