@auth0/nextjs-auth0

Auth0 SDK for signing in to your Next.js applications.

Note: This library is currently in an experimental state and support is best effort.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Getting Started
• Contributing
• Support + Feedback
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Vulnerability Reporting
• What is Auth0
• License

Installation

Using npm:

npm install @auth0/nextjs-auth0

Using yarn:

yarn add @auth0/nextjs-auth0

Note that this package supports the following versions of Node.js: ^10.13.0 || >=12.0.0

Getting Started

Auth0 Configuration

Create a Regular Web Application in the Auth0 Dashboard. If you're using an existing application you'll want to verify that the following settings are configured as follows:

• Json Web Token Signature Algorithm: RS256
• OIDC Conformant: True

Go ahead and configure the URLs for your application:

• Allowed Callback URLs: http://localhost:3000/api/callback
• Allowed Logout URLs: http://localhost:3000/

Take note of the Client ID, Client Secret and Domain of your application because you'll need it in the next step.

Runtime Configuration

And then create an instance of the Auth0 plugin (eg: under /utils/auth0.js):

import { initAuth0 } from '@auth0/nextjs-auth0';
import config from './config';

export default initAuth0({
  domain: '<AUTH0_DOMAIN>',
  clientId: '<AUTH0_CLIENT_ID>',
  clientSecret: '<AUTH0_CLIENT_SECRET>',
  scope: 'openid profile',
  redirectUri: 'http://localhost:3000/api/callback',
  postLogoutRedirectUri: 'http://localhost:3000/',
  session: {
    // The secret used to encrypt the cookie.
    cookieSecret: '<RANDOMLY_GENERATED_SECRET>',
    // The cookie lifetime (expiration) in seconds. Set to 8 hours by default.
    cookieLifetime: 60 * 60 * 8,
    // (Optional) The cookie domain this should run on. Leave it blank to restrict it to your domain.
    cookieDomain: 'your-domain.com',
    // (Optional) SameSite configuration for the session cookie. Defaults to 'lax', but can be changed to 'strict' or 'none'. Set it to false if you want to disable the SameSite setting.
    cookieSameSite: 'lax',
    // (Optional) Store the id_token in the session. Defaults to false.
    storeIdToken: false,
    // (Optional) Store the access_token in the session. Defaults to false.
    storeAccessToken: false,
    // (Optional) Store the refresh_token in the session. Defaults to false.
    storeRefreshToken: false
  },
  oidcClient: {
    // (Optional) Configure the timeout in milliseconds for HTTP requests to Auth0.
    httpTimeout: 2500,
    // (Optional) Configure the clock tolerance in milliseconds, if the time on your server is running behind.
    clockTolerance: 10000
  }
});

Note that when you have configured a Custom Domain in your Auth0 account you should be using that domain (eg: login.acme.com instead of acme.auth0.com) as the AUTH0_DOMAIN. You might also need to make changes to your Login page.

Login

In order to sign in the user we'll first need a link to the login route.

<a href="/api/login">Login</a>

Create an API Route for this route (/pages/api/login.js) which uses the client:

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function login(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleLogin(req, res);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

Note: This route supports providing redirectTo in the query string, eg: (/api/login?redirectTo=/profile). The user will automatically be redirect to this URL after signing in.

This will redirect the user to Auth0. After the transaction is completed Auth0 will redirect the user back to your application. This is why the callback route (/pages/api/callback.js) needs to be created which will create a session cookie:

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function callback(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleCallback(req, res, { redirectTo: '/' });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

The handleCallback function ends the request and sends the response (the redirect), so if you need to set any other cookies, do it before calling the said function and they will kept in the final response.

You can optionally send extra parameters to Auth0 to influence the transaction, for example:

• Showing the login page
• Filling in the user's email address
• Exposing information to the custom login page (eg: to show the signup tab)
• Redirecting the user to a redirectTo url after the transaction is finished

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function login(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleLogin(req, res, {
      authParams: {
        login_hint: '[email protected]',
        ui_locales: 'nl',
        scope: 'some other scope',
        foo: 'bar'
      },
      redirectTo: '/custom-url'
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

You can also control the contents of the state parameter. The nonce will automatically be added to this object.

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function login(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleLogin(req, res, {
      getState: (req) => {
        return {
          someValue: '123',
          redirectTo: '/other-url'
        };
      }
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

Logout

For signing the user out we'll also need a logout link:

<a href="/api/logout">Logout</a>

Create an API Route for this route (/pages/api/logout.js) which uses the client:

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function logout(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleLogout(req, res);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

Note that the third parameter of handleLogout accepts an optional returnTo to allow request-time configuration of where to redirect the user to on logout.

User Profile

If you want to expose a route which returns the user profile to the client you can create an additional route (eg: /pages/api/me.js):

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function me(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleProfile(req, res);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 500).end(error.message);
  }
}

If you need to refetch the user from the server, you can pass an extra parameter, which will also update it in the session:

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function me(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleProfile(req, res, { refetch: true });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 500).end(error.message);
  }
}

You can then load the user after the page has been rendered on the server:

async componentDidMount() {
  const res = await fetch('/api/me');
  if (res.ok) {
    this.setState({
      session: await res.json()
    })
  }
}

If you need to access the user's session from within an API route or a Server-rendered page you can use getSession. Note that this object will also contain the user's access_token and id_token.

Profile.getInitialProps = async ({ req, res }) => {
  if (typeof window === 'undefined') {
    const session = await auth0.getSession(req);
    if (!session || !session.user) {
      res.writeHead(302, {
        Location: '/api/login'
      });
      res.end();
      return;
    }
    return { user: session.user };
  }
};

Getting an Access Token

The user's access token can be stored in the user's session. However, this token will expire after some amount of time. It is possible to use a refresh token to retrieve a new access token. A token cache is available that will handle all of the checks and necessary refresh logic for you:

const tokenCache = auth0.tokenCache(req, res);
const { accessToken } = await tokenCache.getAccessToken();

This method will do all of the necessary work to get you a valid access token. If a new access token is requested using a Refresh Token, the update profile and tokens will be stored in the session.

If for some reason it's not possible to get a new access token an error will be thrown (AccessTokenError).

Note that the current session structure only supports storing a single access token in the cookie. This means that you can't have multiple refresh tokens/access token for different APIs stored in a single session.

You can also require a scope to be present in the requested access token. If you need to call an endpoint which requires the delete:file scope you can require this as such:

const tokenCache = auth0.tokenCache(req, res);
const { accessToken } = await tokenCache.getAccessToken({
  scope: [`delete:file`]
});

If a previous access token has that scope we can continue. If not an error will be thrown and the user will be required to sign in again so you can request new scopes.

For this functionality to work correctly you'll need to persist the access token and refresh token in the session:

  storeAccessToken: true,
  storeRefreshToken: true

The token cache will serve a token from the cache for as long as this token is valid. If you want to force the library to retrieve a new access_token you can provide the refresh option as follows:

const { accessToken } = await tokenCache.getAccessToken({
  scope: [`delete:file`],
  refresh: true
});

This is useful in cases when the user profile changed and you want the access_token to contain the updated claims.

Calling an API

It's a common pattern to use Next.js API Routes and proxy them to external APIs. When doing so these APIs typically require an access_token to be provided. These APIs can then be configured in Auth0.

In order to get an access_token for an API you'll need to configure the audience on the Auth0 plugin and configure it to store the access_token in the cookie:

import { initAuth0 } from '@auth0/nextjs-auth0';

export default initAuth0({
  domain: '<AUTH0_DOMAIN>',
  clientId: '<AUTH0_CLIENT_ID>',
  clientSecret: '<AUTH0_CLIENT_SECRET>',
  audience: 'https://api.mycompany.com/',
  scope: 'openid profile',
  redirectUri: 'http://localhost:3000/api/callback',
  postLogoutRedirectUri: 'http://localhost:3000/',
  session: {
    cookieSecret: '<RANDOMLY_GENERATED_SECRET>',
    cookieLifetime: 60 * 60 * 8,
    cookieDomain: 'https://mycompany.com',
    storeAccessToken: true
  }
});

Then you could create a route (eg: /pages/api/customers.js) which can call an external API (eg: https://api.mycompany.com) using the user's access_token.

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function getCustomers(req, res) {
  try {
    const tokenCache = auth0.tokenCache(req, res);
    const { accessToken } = await tokenCache.getAccessToken();

    const apiClient = new MyApiClient(accessToken);
    return apiClient.getCustomers();
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 500).end(error.message);
  }
}

A full example is available here.

Controlling the callback

There might be a need for you to have more control over the callback handler. The onUserLoaded hook allows you to control what happens before a session is created. You can use this for example to add/remove information in the session.

import auth0 from '../../utils/auth0';

export default async function callback(req, res) {
  try {
    await auth0.handleCallback(req, res, {
      onUserLoaded: async (req, res, session, state) => {
        return {
          ...session,
          user: {
            ...session.user,
            age: 20
          }
        };
      }
    });
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
    res.status(error.status || 400).end(error.message);
  }
}

An other example could also include preventing the user from signing in (if they don't have the required role, ...):

await auth0.handleCallback(req, res, {
  onUserLoaded: async (req, res, session, state) => {
    throw new Error('You are not allowed to sign in');
  }
});

Requiring Authentication

If you have API routes for which you want to require the user to be authenticated you can use the requireAuthentication handler:

import auth0 from '../../lib/auth0';

export default auth0.requireAuthentication(async function billingInfo(req, res) {
  const { user } = await auth0.getSession(req);
  res.json({
    email: user.email,
    country: 'United States',
    paymentMethod: 'Paypal'
  });
});

If the user is authenticated then your API route will simply execute, but if the user is not authenticated an error (401) will be returned:

{
  "error": "not_authenticated",
  "description": "The user does not have an active session or is not authenticated"
}

Documentation

Cookies

All cookies will be set as HttpOnly, SameSite=Lax cookies and will be forced to HTTPS (Secure) if the application is running with NODE_ENV=production and not running on localhost.

The HttpOnly setting will make sure that client-side javascript is unabled to access the cookie to reduce the attack surface of XSS attacks while SameSite=Lax will help mitigate CSRF attacks. Read more about SameSite here.

Troubleshooting

Error id_token issued in the future, now 1570650460, iat 1570650461

Increase the clock tolerance for id_token validation:

import { initAuth0 } from '@auth0/nextjs-auth0';

export default initAuth0({
  ...
  session: {
    ...
  },
  oidcClient: {
    // Eg: increase the tolerance to 10 seconds.
    clockTolerance: 10000
  }
});

Contributing

Run NPM install first to install the dependencies of this project:

npm install

In order to build a release you can run the following commands and the output will be stored in the dist folder:

npm run clean
npm run lint
npm run build

Additionally you can also run tests:

npm run test
npm run test:watch

Support + Feedback

This SDK is in Early Access and support is best effort. Open an issue in this repository to get help or provide feedback.

Vulnerability Reporting

Please do not report security vulnerabilities on the public GitHub issue tracker. The Responsible Disclosure Program details the procedure for disclosing security issues.

What is Auth0?

Auth0 helps you to easily:

• implement authentication with multiple identity providers, including social (e.g., Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, GitHub, Twitter, etc), or enterprise (e.g., Windows Azure AD, Google Apps, Active Directory, ADFS, SAML, etc.)
• log in users with username/password databases, passwordless, or multi-factor authentication
• link multiple user accounts together
• generate signed JSON Web Tokens to authorize your API calls and flow the user identity securely
• access demographics and analytics detailing how, when, and where users are logging in
• enrich user profiles from other data sources using customizable JavaScript rules

Why Auth0?

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.