JavaScript (Web)
Integrate Authgear to your website with the Web SDK
Last updated
Integrate Authgear to your website with the Web SDK
Last updated
In this guide, you'll learn how to integrate Authgear into your website using the Token Approach. In the token approach, the Authgear server returns an access token and refresh token to your SPA application after successful user authentication. Your application can send this access token in subsequent HTTP requests to access protected resources. The alternative to the token approach is the Cookies Approach which involves Authgear setting cookies after successful authentication. Your application will send the cookies in subsequent requests to access protected resources.
This guide uses the Authgear Web SDK for integrating Authgear with a Web app. Supported browsers include:
Last 2 Firefox major versions
Last 2 Chrome major versions
Last 2 Edge major versions
Last 3 Safari major versions
Signup for an Authgear Portal account in https://portal.authgear.com/. Or you can use your self-deployed Authgear.
From the Project listing, create a new Project or select an existing Project. After that, we will need to create an application in the project.
Step 1: Create an application in the Portal
Go to Applications on the left menu bar.
Click ⊕Add Application in the top tool bar.
Input the name of your application and select the application type Single Page Application or Traditional Web Application. Click "Save".
You will see a list of guides that can help you for setting up, then click "Next".
Step 2: Configure the application
Decide the paths in your website that users will be redirected to after they have authenticated or logged out with Authgear.
For after authentication (Authorized Redirect URIs). e.g.https://yourdomain.com/after-authentication
, or http://localhost:4000/after-authentication
for local development.
For after logging out (Post Logout Redirect URIs). e.g.https://yourdomain.com/after-logout
, or http://localhost:4000/after-logout
for local development.
Fill in the Authorized Redirect URIs and Post Logout Redirect URIs that you have defined in the previous steps.
Click "Save" in the top tool bar and keep the Client ID. You can also obtain it again from the applications list later.
If you want to validate JWT access token in your server, under Access Token, turn on Issue JWT as access token. If you will forward incoming requests to Authgear Resolver Endpoint for authentication, leave this unchecked. See comparisons in Backend Integration.
Step 3: Setup a custom domain (Required for Cookie-based authentication)
Go to Custom Domains
Add your custom domain in Input New Domain
Follow the instructions to verify and configure the custom domain.
Click "Activate" to change the domain status to "Active". The custom domain will be your new Authgear endpoint.
For cookie-based authentication, users will log in via the custom domain e.g. "auth.yourdomain.com" . So that a session cookie of your domain is set for the client and all your websites under "*.yourdomain.com" would share the same session cookies automatically.
The Web JS SDK is available as an npm package. Install the package in your project directory
The SDK must be properly configured before use. Call the configure
method every time your page loads up.
The SDK should be configured according to the authentication approach of your choice
Token-based authentication
sessionType
should be set to refresh_token
Cookie-based authentication
endpoint
must be a custom domain endpoint
sessionType
should be set to cookie
When the user clicks login/signup on your website, make a start authorization call to redirect them to the login/signup page.
By default, Authgear will not ask user to login again if user has already logged in. You can optionally set prompt
to login
if you want the user always reach the login page and login again.
After the user authenticates on the login page, the user will be redirected to the redirectURI
with a code
parameter in the URL query. In the redirectURI
of your application, make a finish authorization call to handle the authentication result. This will attempt to exchange the code
for the access token and user info.
Once authorization succeed, the application should navigate the user to other URL such as the user's home page and remove the code
query parameters.
Now, your user is logged in!
When you start launching the application. You may want to know if the user has logged in. (e.g. Redirect users to log in if they haven't logged in). The sessionState
reflects the user logged in state in the SDK local state. That means even thesessionState
is AUTHENTICATED
, the session may be invalid if it is revoked remotely. After initializing the Authgear SDK, call fetchUserInfo
to update the sessionState
as soon as it is proper to do so.
The value of sessionState
can be UNKNOWN
, NO_SESSION
or AUTHENTICATED
. Initially the sessionState
is UNKNOWN
. After a call to authgear.configure
, the session state would become AUTHENTICATED
if a previous session was found, or NO_SESSION
if such session was not found.
In some cases, you may need to obtain current user info through the SDK. (e.g. Display email address in the UI). Use the fetchUserInfo
function to obtain the user info, see example.
Use the logout
function to log out the user. The user will be redirected to your Authgear endpoint to log out their session. You should provide the redirectURI
for the user to return to your app.
To include the access token to the HTTP requests to your application server, there are two ways to achieve this.
Authgear SDK provides the fetch
function for you to call your application server. This fetch
function will include the Authorization header in your application request, and handle refresh access token automatically. The authgear.fetch
implements fetch.
You can get the access token through authgear.accessToken
. Call refreshAccessTokenIfNeeded
every time before using the access token, the function will check and make the network call only if the access token has expired. Include the access token into the Authorization header of the application request.
To protect your application server from unauthorized access. You will need to integrate Authgear to your backend.
Backend IntegrationFor detailed documentation on the JavaScript Web SDK, visit @authgear/web Reference