@passwordless-id/connect

A simple library to "Sign in with passwordless.id" and to fetch the user's profile and "id_token"

NPM: npm install @passwordless-id/connect

CDN: https://unpkg.com/@passwordless-id/connect@1.2.1/dist/connect.min.js

Github: https://github.com/passwordless-id/connect/

Demos

• vanilla JS
• the shortest demo possible

Default usage

import passwordless from 'https://unpkg.com/@passwordless-id/connect'

const scope = 'openid avatar email'
const user = await passwordless.id({scope})

console.log(user)

if(user.signedIn && user.scopeGranted) {
    window.alert(`Hello ${user.profile.nickname}`)
}
else {
    // the following line will perform a redirect and come back to the same page once done
    passwordless.auth({scope})
}

Scope

The scope determines the properties you want to read from the user profile. The lesser the scope you require, the more likely it will be granted by the user. It is good practice to request only what you need.

• openid: this is the default scope. It will provide the sub value, which is an anonymized user ID.
• avatar: Provides nickname, picture (as url) and preferred_username
• email: Provides email and email_verified
• phone: Provides phone and phone_verified
• profile: Provides personal information like real name, birthdate and gender
• address: Provides the postal address

Cache

Setting this value will cache the data in the sessionStorage, so that further calls to passwordless.id() will first check the cache and return the user data if present. However, if the id_token is expired, it will re-perform a redirect or http request in order to fetch a "fresh" id_token. Once the user closes the browser tab, the user data will be cleared.

The id_token

The id_token is a JWT (Json Web Token) that contains both the user's ID and a signature. This can be sent to your server as proof of the user's identity and it's authenticity can be verified by the server.

In order to validate the id_token server side, it is sufficient to use:

GET https://api.passwordless.id/openapi/validate?token=...

Advanced usage

Sign in/up

In order to let the user authenticate (sign in or create an account) and authorize your app to read the profile, you must call auth as follows.

// the following line will perform a redirect and come back to the same page once done
passwordless.auth({
    scope: "openid avatar email"
})

This has no response. The user will be redirected to the Passwordless.ID UI in order to sign in/up and authorize your app to read the profile.

Once done, the user will be redirected back to the original url, to your web page/app.

Fetching profile and id_token

Unlike OAuth2/OpenID which always require redirects, Passwordless.ID contains an extension to fetch the profile and id_token directly: the request method. Of course, this only works if the user is currently signed it and has granted the requested profile scope.

const scope = 'openid avatar email'
await passwordless.request({scope})

Results in the following.

{
  "signedIn": true,
  "scopeGranted": true,
  "profile": {
    "sub": "U1NdanBNalQ6JTI2...",
    "nickname": "Johny",
    ...
  },
  "id_token": "eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9..."
}

If this fails, the flags signedIn and scopeGranted inform you why the user information could not be accessed. Either the user is not signed in or it has not yet authorized your application to read your profile scope.

Options

The auth(...) method can be customized further for OAuth2/OpenID flows with the following parameters.

passwordless.auth({
    scope: "openid",
    response_type: "code id_token token",
    redirect_uri: "https://optional-url-when-login-successful", // optional, if omitted, it will return to the current URL
    nonce: "optional nonce to be present in the id_token",
    state: "optional hash value added to the redirect when using the `code` response_type flow"
})

The response_type is optional, and mainly used in other OAuth2/OpenID flows. It is there for the sake of completeness and only necessary to integrate with other OAuth2/OpenID libraries.

The redirect_uri is optional and used to navigate to another page upon successful authentication and authorization.

The nonce is optional and can be used for increased security, like verifying that your server triggered the sign in.

Development

testing locally

npm install --global http-server
npx http-server

Open http://localhost:8080/demo.html