oauthio

OAuth.io - Node.js SDK

OAuth that just works ! This SDK eases the integration of OAuth.io's services on a Node.js backend.

Features

• Server-side OAuth authentication flow
• Requests to API from the backend, including the unified "me" method
• Unified user information requests for available providers from the backend
• Access token renewal with the refresh_token when available

With this SDK, your OAuth flow is also more secure as the oauth token never leaves your backend.

Requirement

Express-session is required:

var session = require('express-session'); 
...
app.use(session({
    secret: 'some secret',
    resave: false,
    saveUninitialized: true
}));

Installation

To install the SDK, run the following command in the folder of your Nodejs app :

myapp/folder$ npm install oauthio --save

Whenever you need to use the SDK, you can require it from one of your modules like this :

var OAuth = require('oauthio');

To use this SDK, you need to create an account (if you don't have one yet) on oauth.io, create an app in the Dashboard and add a provider to that app.

You'll have to go on the provider's website to register a new app, and copy its keys on oauth.io.

Initializing the SDK

Initialize the SDK with your OAuth.io's app's key and secret. You can get these pieces of information from the Dashboard in oauth.io.

You can call the initialize method right after you initialized your express/restify app and included your middlewares :

OAuth.initialize('your_app_key', 'your_app_secret');

Basic usage

To authorize your user to one of the 100+ provider of OAuth.io, you need to define 2 endpoints.

The first endpoint is used to redirect your user on the authorization page of the chosen provider. The second one is used as a callback when your user is authorized or when your user canceled the demand of authorization.

app.get('/signin', oauth.auth(provider_name, url_to_redirect));

• provider_name is the provider that your user has to connect with (e.g. twitter, facebook, google or 100+ others).

• url_to_redirect is the full url of your callback endpoint (e.g. http://your-website.com/oauth/redirect)

Once your user has authorized or canceled the authorization, he is redirected on the url_to_redirect, you can define this endpoint like this:

app.get('/oauth/redirect', oauth.redirect(function(result, req, res) {
    //todo with result
}));

Then, you can use result to make API call to the provider easily using get(), post(), put(), patch(), del() or me() method.

Take a look to this complete example using twitter API

app.get('/signin', oauth.auth('twitter', 'http://localhost:8080/oauth/redirect'));
 
app.get('/oauth/redirect', oauth.redirect(function(result, req, res) {
    if (result instanceof Error) {
        res.send(500, "error: " + result.message);
        return;
    }
    result.me().done(function(me) {
        console.log(me);
        res.send(200, JSON.stringify(me));
    });
}));
 

Auth method

The SDK gives you an auth method that allows you to retrieve a request_object. That request_object allows you to make API calls, and contains the access token.

The auth method takes :

1. a provider name
2. the session array
3. (optional) an options object

It returns a promise to let you handle the callback and error management.

OAuth.auth('provider', req.session, {
    option_field: option_value,
    //...
});

The options object can contain the following fields :

• code: an OAuth code, that will be used to get credentials from the provider and build a request_object
• credentials: a credentials object, that will be used to rebuild a refreshed request_object
• force_refresh: forces the credentials refresh if a refresh token is available

If nothing is given in the options object, the auth method tries to build a request_object from the session.

Authenticating the user from the frontend JS SDK

When you launch the authentication flow from the front-end (that is to say when you show a popup to the user so that he can allow your app to use his/her data), you'll be given a code (see next section, "Integrating the front-end SDK" to learn how to get the code).

You'll have to give this code to your backend, so that it can retrieve an access token from oauth.io.

To do that, you have to create an authentication endpoint on your backend. This endpoint will make the access token request to oauth.io. You can use the same endpoint to perform local login/subscribe actions too.

app.post('/api/signin', function (req, res) {
    var code = JSON.parse(req.body).code;
 
    // Here the auth method takes the field 'code'
    // in its options object. It will thus use that code
    // to retrieve credentials from the provider.
    OAuth.auth('facebook', req.session, {
        code: code
    })
    .then(function (request_object) {
        // request_object contains the access_token if OAuth 2.0
        // or the couple oauth_token,oauth_token_secret if OAuth 1.0
        
        // request_object also contains methods get|post|patch|put|delete|me
        return request_object.get('/me');
    })
    .then(function (info) {
        var user = {
            email: info.email,
            firstname: info.first_name,
            lastname: info.last_name
        };
        //login your user here.
        res.send(200, 'Successfully logged in');
    })
    .fail(function (e) {
        //handle errors here
        res.send(400, 'An error occured');
    });
});

Authenticating a user from the session

Once a user is authenticaded on a service, the credentials are stored in the session. You can access it very easily from any other endpoint to use it. Let's say for example that you want to post something on your user's wall on Facebook :

app.post('/api/wall_message', function (req, res){
    var data = JSON.parse(req.body);
    //data contains field "message", containing the message to post
    
    OAuth.auth('facebook', req.session)
        .then(function (request_object) {
            return request_object.post('/me/feed', {
                message: data.message
            });
        })
        .then(function (r) {
            //r contains Facebook's response, normaly an id
            if (r.id)
                res.send(200, 'Successfully posted message');
            else
                res.send(400, 'An error occured while posting the message');
        })
        .fail(function (e) {
            res.send(400, 'An error occured while posting the message');
        });
});

Authenticating a user from saved credentials

• Saving credentials If you want to save the credentials to use them when the user is offline, (e.g. in a cron loading information), you can save the credentials in the data storage of your choice. All you need to do is to retrieve the credentials object from the request_object :

OAuth.auth('provider', req.session, {
    code: code
})
    .then(function (request_object) {
        var credentials = request_object->getCredentials();
 
        // Here you can save the credentials object wherever you want
 
    });

• Using saved credentials

You can then rebuild a request_object from the credentials you saved earlier :

// Here you retrieved the credentials object from your data storage
 
OAuth.auth('provider', req.session, {
    credentials: credentials
})
    .then(function (request_object) {
        // Here request_object has been rebuilt from the credentials object
        // If the credentials are expired and contain a refresh token,
        // the auth method automatically refresh them.
    });
 

Refreshing saved credentials

Tokens are automatically refreshed when you use the auth method with the session or with saved credentials. The SDK checks that the access token is expired whenever it's called.

If it is, and if a refresh token is available in the credentials (you may have to configure the OAuth.io app in a specific way for some providers), it automatically calls the OAuth.io refresh token endpoint.

If you want to force a refresh from the auth method, you can pass the force_refresh field in the option object, like this :

OAuth.auth('provider', req.session, {
    force_refresh: true
});

You can also refresh a credentials object manually. To do that, call the OAuth.refreshCredentials on the request_object or on a credentials object :

OAuth.refreshCredentials(request_object, req.session)
    .then(function (request_object) {
        // Here request_object has been refreshed
    })
    .fail(function (e) {
        // Handle an error
    });

Detailed documentation

This part lists and describes all the available methods in this SDK.

OAuth object

Available methods :

Version information

OAuth.getVersion();

Returns the version of the SDK.

Initialization

OAuth.initialize('app_key', 'app_secret');

Initializes the SDK by storing your app key and secret inside its cache.

State token generation

var token = OAuth.generateStateToken(req);

Returns a token and stores it in the session.

Authentication

var promise = OAuth.auth(code, req);

Retrieves the access token from oauth.io by sending the code, which was sent by the front-end.

Returns a promise, that you can use like this :

promise.then(success_callback).fail(error_callback);

success_callback takes the authentication object as argument, error_callback takes an error as argument.

Getting a user's authentication object for a given provider

var authentication_object = OAuth.create(req, 'provider_name')

This returns an authentication object for the current user and the given provider.

Authentication object

The authentication object refers to what is returned by the auth and create methods.

It contains the following :

auth_obj.access_token // if the provider implements OAuth 2.0

auth_obj.oauth_token // if the provider implements OAuth 1.0
auth_obj.oauth_token_secret // if the provider implements OAuth 1.0

auth_obj.expires_in //the number of seconds to token expiration

Requests methods in the authentication object

get

var promise = auth_obj.get(url);

Returns a promise, and performs a GET request to the API. Use the promise like this :

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

post

var promise = auth_obj.post(url, data)

Returns a promise and performs a POST request to the API. You can add a body to the request as the second parameter (litteral object). Use the promise like this :

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

put

var promise = auth_obj.put(url, data)

Returns a promise and performs a PUT request to the API. You can add a body to the request as the second parameter (litteral object). Use the promise like this :

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

patch

var promise = auth_obj.patch(url, data)

Returns a promise and performs a PATCH request to the API. You can add a body to the request as the second parameter (litteral object). Use the promise like this :

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

del

var promise = auth_obj.del(url, data)

Returns a promise and performs a DELETE request to the API.

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

me

var promise = auth_obj.me(filter)

This method gets a unified object representing the user. The fields' format always remain the same, regardless of the provider, so that you can handle several providers in an easier way.

You can provide a filter, which is an array of strings, containing the different fields you need. For example :

var filter = ['email', 'firstname', 'lastname'];

Use the returned promise like this :

promise.then(function (r) {
    //r is the API's response
})
.fail(function (e) {
    //handle the error
});

Please refer to this page to know which fields are available and for more information about OAuth.io's "me" feature.

Contributing to this SDK

Issues

Please discuss issues and features on Github Issues. We'll be happy to answer to your questions and improve the SDK based on your feedback.

Pull requests

You are welcome to fork this SDK and to make pull requests on Github. We'll review each of them, and integrate in a future release if they are relevant.

The SDK is written in Coffee Script, and uses Grunt To compile it, just run :

sdk/folder$ git clone therepo; cd therepo
sdk/folder$ npm install -g grunt-cli
sdk/folder$ npm install
sdk/folder$ grunt

Testing the SDK

We use jasmine-node to test the SDK. To test it, install jasmine-node 2.0 :

$ npm install -g jasmine-node@2.0

Then you can launch the test suite from the SDK folder :

sdk/folder$ jasmine-node tests/unit/spec --verbose

License

The SDK is released under the Apache2 license.

Powered by OAuth.io.