Authentication and Users

Every user has to authenticate with ConnectyCube before using any ConnectyCube functionality.

When someone connects with an application using ConnectyCube, the application will need to obtain a session token which provides temporary, secure access to ConnectyCube APIs.

A session token is an opaque string that identifies a user and an application.

Create session token

As a starting point, the user’s session token needs to be created allowing user any further actions within the app. Pass login/email and password to identify a user:

const userCredentials = { login: "cubeuser", password: "awesomepwd" };

ConnectyCube.createSession(userCredentials)
  .then((session) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Note: With the request above, the user is created automatically on the fly upon session creation using the login (or email) and password from the request parameters.

Important: For better security it is recommended to deny the session creation without an existing user.
For this, set ‘Session creation without an existing user entity’ to Deny under the Application -> Overview -> Permissions in the admin panel.

Authentication via phone number

You need to create Firebase project_id and obtain Firebase access_token after SMS code verification, then pass these parameters to login method:

const userCredentials = {
  provider: "firebase_phone",
  "firebase_phone[project_id]": "...",
  "firebase_phone[access_token]": "...",
};

ConnectyCube.createSession(userCredentials)
  .then((user) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Note

in order to login via phone number you need to create a session token first.

Authentication via Firebase email

You need to create Firebase project_id and obtain Firebase access_token after email/password verification, then pass these parameters to login method:

const userCredentials = {
  provider: 'firebase_email',
  firebase_email: {
    project_id: 'XXXXXXXXXXX',
    access_token: 'XXXXXXXXXXXYYYYYY'
  }
};

ConnectyCube.createSession(userCredentials)
  .then((user) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Note

in order to login via email you need to create a session token first.

Authentication via external identity provider

Custom Identity Provider (CIdP) feature is necessary if you have your own user database and want to authenticate users in ConnectyCube against it. It works the same way as Facebook/Twitter SSO.

With Custom Identity Provider feature you can continue use your user database instead of storing/copying user data to ConnectyCube database.

CIdP high level integration flow

To get started with CIdP integration, check the Custom Identity Provider guide which describes high level integration flow.

Once you done with the setup mapping in ConnectyCube Dashboard, it’s time to verify the integration. To perform CIdP login, the same ConnectyCube User Login API is used. You just use existing login request params to pass your external user token:

const userCredentials = { login: "eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpZCI6MTIzNDU2Nzg5LCJuYW1lIjoiSm9zZXBoIn0.OpOSSw7e485LOP5PrzScxHb7SR6sAOMRckfFwi4rp7o" };

ConnectyCube.createSession(userCredentials)
  .then((user) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Once the login is successful, ConnectyCube will create an underalying User entity, so then you can use ConnectyCube APIs in a same way as you do with a normal login. With CIdP we do not have/store any user password in ConnectyCube User entity.

Following further integration, you may need to connect to Chat. In a case of CIdP login, you do not have a user password. In such cases you should use ConnectyCube session token as a password for chat connection. Follow the Connect to Chat with CIdP guide.

Create guest session

To create a session with guest user use the following code:

const guestUserCredentials = { guest: '1', full_name: 'Awesome Smith' };

ConnectyCube.createSession(guestUserCredentials)
  .then((session) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Session expiration

Expiration time for session token is 2 hours after last request to API. If you perform query with expired token, you will receive the error Required session does not exist. In this case you need to recreate a session token.

There is a special callback function to handle this case:

const CONFIG = {
  on: {
    sessionExpired: (handleResponse, retry) => {
      // call handleResponse() if you do not want to process a session expiration,
      // so an error will be returned to origin request
      // handleResponse();

      ConnectyCube.createSession()
        .then(retry)
        .catch((error) => {});
    },
  },
};

ConnectyCube.init(CREDENTIALS, CONFIG);

Destroy session token

To destroy a session use the following code:

ConnectyCube.destroySession().catch((error) => {});

const userProfile = {
  login: "marvin18",
  password: "supersecurepwd",
  email: "awesomeman@gmail.com",
  full_name: "Marvin Simon",
  phone: "47802323143",
  website: "https://dozensofdreams.com",
  tag_list: ["iphone", "apple"],
  custom_data: JSON.stringify({ middle_name: "Bartoleo" }),
};

ConnectyCube.users
  .signup(userProfile)
  .then((user) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Response example from ConnectyCube.users.signup(userProfile):

{
  "id": 81,
  "full_name": "Marvin Simon",
  "email": "awesomeman@gmail.com",
  "login": "marvin18",
  "phone": "47802323143",
  "website": "https://dozensofdreams.com",
  "created_at": "2018-06-15T14:20:54Z",
  "updated_at": "2018-12-05T11:58:02Z",
  "last_request_at": "2018-12-05T11:58:02Z",
  "external_user_id": null,
  "facebook_id": null,
  "twitter_id": null,
  "custom_data": "{\"middle_name\":\"Bartoleo\"}",
  "blob_id": null,
  "avatar": "",
  "user_tags": "iphone,apple"
}

Only login (or email) + password are required.

User profile update

const updatedUserProfile = {
  login: "marvin18sim",
  full_name: "Mar Sim",
};

ConnectyCube.users
  .update(updatedUserProfile)
  .then((user) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Response example from ConnectyCube.users.update(updatedUserProfile):

{
  "id": 81,
  "full_name": "Mar Sim",
  "email": "awesomeman@gmail.com",
  "login": "marv18sim",
  "phone": "47802323143",
  "website": "https://dozensofdreams.com",
  "created_at": "2018-06-15T14:20:54Z",
  "updated_at": "2018-12-05T11:58:02Z",
  "last_request_at": "2018-12-05T11:58:02Z",
  "external_user_id": null,
  "facebook_id": null,
  "twitter_id": null,
  "custom_data": "{\"middle_name\": \"Bartoleo\"}",
  "blob_id": null,
  "avatar": "",
  "user_tags": "iphone,apple"
}

If you want to change your password, you need to provide 2 parameters: password and old_password. Updated user entity will be returned.

User avatar

You can set a user’s avatar. You just need to upload it to the ConnectyCube cloud storage and then connect to user.

// for example, a file from HTML form input field
const inputFile = $("input[type=file]")[0].files[0];

const fileParams = {
  name: inputFile.name,
  file: inputFile,
  type: inputFile.type,
  size: inputFile.size,
  public: false,
};

const updateUser = (uploadedFile) => {
  const updatedUserProfile = { avatar: uploadedFile.uid };
  return ConnectyCube.users.update(updatedUserProfile);
};

ConnectyCube.storage
  .createAndUpload(fileParams)
  .then(updateUser)
  .then((updatedUser) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Response example from ConnectyCube.storage.createAndUpload(fileParams):

{
  "account_id": 7,
  "app_id": 12,
  "blob_object_access": {
    "blob_id": 421517,
    "expires": "2020-10-06T15:51:38Z",
    "id": 421517,
    "object_access_type": "Write",
    "params": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/cb-shared-s3?Content-Type=text%2Fplain..."
  },
  "blob_status": null,
  "content_type": "text/plain",
  "created_at": "2020-10-06T14:51:38Z",
  "id": 421517,
  "name": "awesome.txt",
  "public": false,
  "set_completed_at": null,
  "size": 11,
  "uid": "7cafb6030d3e4348ba49cab24c0cf10800",
  "updated_at": "2020-10-06T14:51:38Z"
}

Now, other users can get you avatar:

const avatarUID = updatedUser.avatar;
const avatarURL = ConnectyCube.storage.privateUrl(avatarUID);
const avatarHTML = "<img src='" + avatarURL + "' alt='photo'/>";

Password reset

It’s possible to reset a password via email:

ConnectyCube.users
  .resetPassword("awesomeman@gmail.com")
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

If provided email is valid - an email with password reset instruction will be sent to it.

Retrieve users V2

Examples

Retrieve users by ID

const searchParams = {
    limit: 10,
    offset: 50,
    id: { in: [51941, 51946] }
}

ConnectyCube.users.getV2(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve users by login

const searchParams = { login: 'adminFirstUser' }

ConnectyCube.users.getV2(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve users by last_request_at

const date = new Date(2017, 10, 10)
const searchParams = { last_request_at: { gt: date } }

ConnectyCube.users.getV2(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

More information (fields, operators, request rules) available here

Retrieve users V1 (Deprecated)

Retrieve users by ID (Deprecated)

const params = {
  page: 1,
  per_page: 5,
  filter: {
    field: "id",
    param: "in",
    value: [51941, 51946],
  },
};

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(params)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Response example from ConnectyCube.users.get(params) - see

const searchParams = { login: "marvin18" };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve user by email (Deprecated)

const searchParams = { email: "marvin18@example.com" };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve users by full name (Deprecated)

const searchParams = { full_name: "Marvin Samuel" };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve user by phone number (Deprecated)

const searchParams = { phone: "44678162873" };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve user by external ID (Deprecated)

const searchParams = { external_user_id: "675373912" };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Retrieve users by tags (Deprecated)

const searchParams = { tags: ["apple"] };

ConnectyCube.users
  .get(searchParams)
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});

Delete user

A user can delete himself from the platform:

ConnectyCube.users
  .delete()
  .then((result) => {})
  .catch((error) => {});