Paul Coady

Melbourne, Australia

Amazon Web Services, Node, Angular, Famo.us, Cordova/Phonegap

Please go to our Blogger site at blog.backspace.academy This site will no longer be updated.

Using Cognito with Node.JS

This tutorial will focus on using Cognito with the AWS Javascript SDK for Node.js along with the Node Passport module to simplify token creation. This could be used with apps that access files on a server or S3 bucket and also require user information to be stored. I have chosen Facebook as the identity provider but a similar process applies for Amazon and Google. I would recommend only using one identity provider for your app so that your users don't produce multiple Cognito key stores.

With the release of v2.0.14 of the AWS Javascript SDK, a new object CognitoIdentityCredentials has greatly simplified the CognitoID credentials process by removing the need to create STS tokens and temporary IAM credentials. The simplified process to create a Cognito session is as follows:

Assumptions. You know the following:

1. How to set up Node on an EC2 instance.

2. Can configure firewall settings on EC2.

3. Experienced with Node and Express.

If not please go to the recommended node books page and purchase one of our recommended Node books. (You will also be helping me create more free tutorials like this). I will be creating another tutorial on setting up Node on EC2 after this, so by the time you finish the book you can come back and finish the tutorials.

Register a Facebook App

 

Go to developers.facebook.com and select Apps - Create a New App

Record your App ID and App Secret somewhere safe, we will need it later.

Click on Settings then click on Add Platform

Select Website

Site URL enter your site's Facebook callback page: http://yoursite.com/auth/facebook/callback

App Domains enter your site domain: http://yoursite.com

Enter your contact email and Save Changes

Next select Status and Review

Toggle Yes for Do you want to make this app and all its live features available to the general public?

 

Now that we have registered our new app with Facebook, we will tell Cognito all about it on the next page.

Like this tutorial? Please click the share buttons to tell others.

Next - Create a Cognito Pool