In the rapidly evolving world of software development, the quest for more efficient, secure, and scalable solutions is never-ending. Agnost is an open-source App Development Platform designed to simplify the backend development process, offering an all-in-one solution that includes an application server, database, authentication, queues, cache, cronjobs, and real-time capabilities. Today, we're diving into one of the key modules of Agnost: its authentication module.
Understanding Agnost's Authentication Module
Agnost's authentication module stands out as a cornerstone for building secure and scalable backend applications. By offering a flexible and straightforward way to manage user accounts, Agnost ensures that developers can focus on creating exceptional user experiences without the hassle of implementing complex authentication systems from scratch.
Overview of Agnost's Authentication Module
At its core, Agnost's authentication module is built to be intuitive, secure, and highly scalable. It leverages modern security protocols and standards to ensure that applications built on Agnost are fortified against unauthorized access, all while providing a seamless user experience. Whether you're developing a small-scale project or an enterprise-grade application, Agnost's authentication module is designed to meet your needs with minimal overhead.
It's built on top of the JWT standard, which is a secure and reliable way to transmit information between parties. Agnost's authentication module is designed to be flexible and easy to use, offering a wide range of features that can be tailored to fit the needs of any project.
Here are some of the key features of Agnost's authentication module:
User Registration: Agnost provides a simple and secure way to register new users, ensuring that their data is stored safely and efficiently.
User Authentication: Agnost's authentication module offers a seamless way to authenticate users, ensuring that only authorized users can access the application.
Password Reset: Agnost's authentication module includes a straightforward way to reset user passwords, ensuring that users can regain access to their accounts quickly and securely.
Social Authentication: Agnost's authentication module supports social login providers such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, offering a seamless way for users to log in to the application.
Agnost's authentication module offers a wide range of additional features, such as magic-link authentication, email verification, and user management, ensuring that developers have everything they need to build secure and scalable applications. For a comprehensive list of features, refer to the authentication documentation.
Key Benefits of Agnost's Authentication Module
Agnost's authentication module offers a wide range of benefits that make it an ideal choice for developers looking to build secure and scalable backend applications. Here are some of the key benefits of Agnost's authentication module:
Easy Integration: Agnost's authentication module is designed to be straightforward to integrate into any project, ensuring that developers can get up and running quickly.
Scalability: Designed to scale with your application, Agnost's authentication can handle anything from a handful of users to millions, without skipping a beat.
Customization: With open-source code, Agnost's authentication module can be customized to fit the unique needs of any project, ensuring that developers can build applications that meet their specific requirements.
Getting Started with Agnost's Authentication Module
Before leveraging Agnost's authentication capabilities, it's essential to set up the Kubernetes cluster and deploy Agnost. Once Agnost is up and running, you can start integrating its authentication module into your projects. This setup enables seamless interaction with Agnost services from your web or mobile applications. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you get started:
Prerequisites
Agnost: Ensure that Agnost is deployed on your Kubernetes cluster. If you haven't already deployed Agnost, you can follow the official documentation to get started.
Kubernetes Cluster: You'll need a Kubernetes cluster to deploy Agnost and its authentication module. If you don't have a Kubernetes cluster, you can use a managed Kubernetes service such as Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), or you can set up a local Kubernetes cluster using tools like Minikube or Kind.
Create an app withing Agnost: You can create an app within Agnost by following the official documentation.
Deploy your app version to its environment: Agnost ensures automatic deployment of the master version to an associated environment. However, you can manually deploy a version to an environment by following the official documentation.
Generate an API Key: You can generate an API key by following the official documentation.
Referencing the official documentation is essential to ensure that you have all the necessary information to integrate Agnost's authentication module into your projects.
Upon creating an app, Agnost automatically creates and deploys a master version to an associated environment but does not generate an API key. You must manually create this key, accessible along with other necessary information (client key, base URL) from your app version's Settings or Dashboard view in Agnost Studio.
Installing Agnost's Client Library
The Agnost client library can be installed via npm or Yarn.
- Npm
- Yarn
npm install @agnost/client
yarn install @agnost/client
After installation, if you're using a bundler like webpack, import Agnost and
create your client instance with the required baseUrl and apiKey.
// Importing Agnost client library
import { createClient } from "@agnost/client"
// Client instance creation
let baseUrl = "https://my-cluster.com/env-myenvid"
let apiKey = "ak-f59c9ef3a53b40669c6a79a62593e153"
const agnost = createClient(baseUrl, apiKey)
CDN Installation
For CDN installation, include the Agnost client library script in your HTML and
use the global agnost variable to create a client instance.
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@agnost/client"></script>
<script>
const { createClient } = agnost
const client = createClient(
"http://my-cluster.com/env-myenvid",
"f59c9ef3a53b40669b6a79a62593e153",
)
</script>
Initialization Options
The Agnost client library offers several initialization options, including
realtime, signInRedirect, and localStorage, to tailor the client instance
to your application's needs.
import { createClient } from "@agnost/client"
let options = {
signInRedirect: "http://localhost:3000/auth-redirect",
realtime: {
autoJoinChannels: false,
bufferMessages: true,
echoMessages: true,
reconnectionDelay: 2000,
timeout: 30000,
},
}
const agnost = createClient(baseUrl, apiKey, options)
By default, the Agnost client library utilizes the browser's
Window.localStorage. If your application requires a different storage
mechanism or is server-side, you must provide a custom storage implementation.
Managing User Accounts with Agnost
Agnost provides three primary methods to manage user accounts, catering to a wide range of application needs:
- Email-based Authentication
- Phone Number-based Authentication
- OAuth-based Authentication (with providers like Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook GitHub)
In this blog post, we will focus on email-based authentication, showcasing how Agnost simplifies this common yet critical functionality.
Email-based Authentication
Signing up a new user with email in Agnost is as simple as calling the
signUpWithEmail method encapsulates the complexity of this process,
offering a seamless integration. Here's how you can utilize it:
Basic User Sign-up
To sign up a new user with an email and password, you can use the following JavaScript example:
let email = "[email protected]"
let password = "SecurePassword123"
// Sign up a new user with email and password
const result = await agnost.auth.signUpWithEmail(
email,
password,
"https://yourdomain.com/redirect-url",
)
Advanced User Sign-up with Additional Data:
Agnost also supports the inclusion of additional user data during the sign-up process. This feature is especially useful for applications requiring more detailed user profiles. Here's how you can add extra information such as name, surname, and title:
const result = await agnost.auth.signUpWithEmail(
email,
password,
"https://yourdomain.com/redirect-url",
{
name: "John",
surname: "Doe",
title: "Developer",
},
)
By passing an object with additional user details, Agnost ensures that your application can maintain rich user profiles without the need for separate data entry processes.
Leveraging Agnost's Authentication Module
Agnost's client libraries make integrating these authentication methods into your application straightforward. Whether you're working on a web, mobile, or desktop application, these libraries provide a consistent and easy-to-use API that abstracts away the complexities of direct backend communication.
Conclusion
Agnost's authentication module offers a robust, scalable, and easy-to-implement solution for managing user accounts. By providing comprehensive methods for email, phone number, and OAuth-based authentication, Agnost helps developers to build secure and feature-rich applications with ease.
As you integrate Agnost into your projects, remember to leverage the client libraries and the extensive documentation available at Agnost's official website for additional methods and advanced functionalities.
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