Getting Started

useAuth is designed to be quick to setup. You'll need an account with Auth0 or Netlify Identity and the appropriate access keys.

1. Install the hook

$ yarn add react-use-auth

Downloads from npm, adds to your package.json, etc. You can use npm as well.

2. Install your auth client

useAuth does not install its own authentication clients. Instead they're marked as peer dependencies.

Install auth0-js or netlify-identity-widget depending on what you'd like to use. More coming soon :)

$ yarn add auth0-js

or

$ yarn add netlify-identity-widget

You'll see warnings about missing peer dependencies for the client you aren't using. That's okay.

3. Configure with AuthConfig

useAuth uses an <AuthConfig> component to configure your authentication client. We use XState behind the scenes to manage authentication state for you.

Ensure AuthConfig renders on every page.

With Gatsby, add it to gatsby-browser.js. With NextJS, _app.js is best. You don't need to wrap your component tree, but you can if you prefer. We make sure useAuth doesn't break server-side rendering. ✌️

// gatsby-browser.js
import * as React from "react";
import { navigate } from "gatsby";
import { AuthConfig } from "react-use-auth";
import { Auth0 } from "react-use-auth/auth0"
export const wrapRootElement = ({ element }) => (
    <>
        <AuthConfig
            navigate={navigate}
            authProvider={Auth0}
            params={{
                domain: "useauth.auth0.com",
                clientID: "GjWNFNOHqlino7lQNjBwEywalaYtbIzh"
            }}
        />
        {element}
    </>
);

<AuthConfig> initializes the global XState state machine, sets up an Auth0 client, and validates user sessions on every load. You now have easy access to authentication in your whole app :)

The config options are:

1. navigate – your navigation function, used for redirects. Tested with Gatsby, NextJS, and React Router. Anything should work.

2. authProvider – the useAuth interface to your authentication provider.

3. params – parameters for your authentication provider

useAuth client wrappers provide smart defaults.

More detail on using custom configuration for each client in Use with Auth0, and Use with Netlify Identity. To learn about how this works, go to Create an auth provider

PS: feel free to use my Auth0 domain and clientID to see if useAuth is a good fit for you. That's why they're visible in the code snippet 😊

4. Create the callback page

Auth0 and most other authentication providers use OAuth. That requires redirecting your user to their login form. After login, the provider redirects users back to your app.

You can skip this step with Netlify Identity. It uses an in-page popup.

Any way of creating React pages should work, here's the code I use for Gatsby:

import * as React from "react"
import { useAuth } from "react-use-auth"
const Auth0CallbackPage = () = {
    // this is the important part
    const { handleAuthentication } = useAuth()
    React.useEffect(() => {
        handleAuthentication()
    }, [handleAuthentication])
    // 👆
    return (
        <h1>
            This is the auth callback page,
            you should be redirected immediately!
        </h1>
    )
}
export default Auth0CallbackPage

The goal is to load a page, briefly show some text, and run the handleAuthentication method from useAuth on page load.

That method will create a cookie in local storage with your user's information and redirect back to homepage. You can pass a postLoginRoute param to redirect to a different page.

Make sure you add <domain>/auth0_callback as a valid callback URL in your Auth0 config.

5. Enjoy useAuth

You're ready to use useAuth for authentication in your React app. 🤘

Here's a login button for example:

const Login = () => {
    const { isAuthenticated, login, logout } = useAuth();
    if (isAuthenticated()) {
        return <button onClick={logout}>Logout</button>;
    } else {
        return <button onClick={login}>Login</button>;
    }
};

isAuthenticated is a method that checks if the user's cookie is still valid.

login and logout trigger their respective actions.

You can even say hello to your users:

// src/pages/index.js
const IndexPage = () => {
  const { isAuthenticated, user } = useAuth()
  return (
    <Layout>
      <SEO title="Home" />
      <h1>Hi {isAuthenticated() ? user.name : "people"}</h1>
  )
}

Check isAuthenticated then use the user object. ✌️