I have read many posts and articles on this topic but still cant connect the dots. I want to make a Rails app that is strictly a JSON API maybe using Sinatra or the rails-api gem. I also want to make both a web client app and an iPhone app which consumes the API. No plans on letting third party dev's use it.

So I could create a separate username/password combination for both the web and mobile client and use HTTP Basic over SSL. Each app would have these values as configs in the source and use it to authenticate to the API so only these can make a call. Anyone else trying would get a 401 error returned. This would be considered handling the API authentication.

The web and mobile client apps allow end users to sign up and read/write data to the API. When each user is created, I create and save a token in their profile. If a user successfully signs in, I send back the token. On each future read/write then also send along this token in the header. I get the token and lookup the user in the database and make the read/write.

Does this sound like an appropriate way to handle it. For the web client, when I initially send back the token, where do I store it. In a cookie? Do I also drop a cookie to handle session state?