Call Your API Using the Authorization Code Flow

This tutorial will help you call your own API using the Authorization Code Flow. If you want to learn how the flow works and why you should use it, see Authorization Code Flow. If you want to learn to add login to your regular web app, see Add Login Using the Authorization Code Flow.

Auth0 makes it easy for your app to implement the Authorization Code Flow using:

• Regular Web App Quickstarts: The easiest way to implement the flow.
• Authentication API: If you prefer to build your own solution, keep reading to learn how to call our API directly.

Prerequisites

Before beginning this tutorial:

• Register your Application with Auth0.

  • Select an Application Type of Regular Web Apps.
  • Add an Allowed Callback URL of {https://yourApp/callback}.
  • Make sure your Application’s Grant Types include Authorization Code. To learn how, read Update Grant Types.
  • If you want your Application to be able to use refresh tokens, make sure the Application’s Grant Types include refresh token. To learn how, read Update Grant Types. To learn more about Refresh Tokens, read refresh tokens.

• Register your API with Auth0

  • If you want your API to receive refresh tokens to allow it to obtain new tokens when the previous ones expire, enable Allow Offline Access.

Steps

Authorize user

This step may include one or more of the following processes:

• Authenticating the user
• Redirecting the user to an Identity Provider to handle authentication
• Checking for active Single Sign-on (SSO) sessions
• Obtaining user consent for the requested permission level, unless consent has been previously given.

To authorize the user, your app must send the user to the authorization URL.

Example authorization URL

https://{yourDomain}/authorize?
    response_type=code&
    client_id={yourClientId}&
    redirect_uri={https://yourApp/callback}&
    scope={scope}&
    audience={apiAudience}&
    state={state}

Parameters

Note that for authorizing a user when calling a custom API, you:

• must include an audience parameter
• can include additional scopes supported by the target API

Parameter Name	Description
response_type	Denotes the kind of credential that Auth0 will return (code or token). For this flow, the value must be code.
client_id	Your application’s Client ID. You can find this value in your Application Settings.
redirect_uri	The URL to which Auth0 will redirect the browser after authorization has been granted by the user. The Authorization Code will be available in the code URL parameter. You must specify this URL as a valid callback URL in your Application Settings. Warning: Per the OAuth 2.0 Specification, Auth0 removes everything after the hash and does not honor any fragments.
scope	Specifies the scopes for which you want to request authorization, which dictate which claims (or user attributes) you want returned. These must be separated by a space. You can request any of the standard OpenID Connect (OIDC) scopes about users, such as profile or email, custom claims conforming to a namespaced format, or any scopes supported by the target API (e.g., read:contacts). Include offline_access to get a Refresh Token (make sure that the Allow Offline Access field is enabled in the Application Settings).
audience	The unique identifier of the API your web app wants to access. Use the Identifier value on the Settings tab for the API you created as part of the prerequisites for this tutorial.
state	(recommended) An opaque arbitrary alphanumeric string your app adds to the initial request that Auth0 includes when redirecting back to your application. To see how to use this value to prevent cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks, see Mitigate CSRF Attacks With State Parameters.
organization	(optional) ID of the organization to use when authenticating a user. When not provided, if your application is configured to Display Organization Prompt, the user will be able to enter the organization name when authenticating.
invitation	(optional) Ticket ID of the organization invitation. When inviting a member to an Organization, your application should handle invitation acceptance by forwarding the invitation and organization key-value pairs when the user accepts the invitation.

As an example, your HTML snippet for your authorization URL when adding login to your app might look like:

<a href="https://{yourDomain}/authorize?
  response_type=code&
  client_id={yourClientId}&
  redirect_uri={https://yourApp/callback}&  
  scope=appointments%20contacts&
  audience=appointments:api&
  state=xyzABC123">
  Sign In
</a>

Response

If all goes well, you’ll receive an HTTP 302 response. The authorization code is included at the end of the URL:

HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Location: {https://yourApp/callback}?code={authorizationCode}&state=xyzABC123

Request tokens

Now that you have an Authorization Code, you must exchange it for tokens. Using the extracted Authorization Code (code) from the previous step, you will need to POST to the token URL.

Example POST to token URL

cURL

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://{yourDomain}/oauth/token' \
  --header 'content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
  --data grant_type=authorization_code \
  --data 'client_id={yourClientId}' \
  --data 'client_secret={yourClientSecret}' \
  --data 'code=yourAuthorizationCode}' \
  --data 'redirect_uri={https://yourApp/callback}'

Parameters

Parameter Name	Description
grant_type	Set this to authorization_code.
code	The authorization_code retrieved in the previous step of this tutorial.
client_id	Your application’s Client ID. You can find this value in your Application Settings.
client_secret	Your application’s Client Secret. You can find this value in your Application Settings. To learn more about available application authentication methods, read Application Credentials.
redirect_uri	The valid callback URL set in your Application settings. This must exactly match the redirect_uri passed to the authorization URL in the previous step of this tutorial. Note that this must be URL encoded.

Response

If all goes well, you’ll receive an HTTP 200 response with a payload containing access_token, refresh_token, id_token, and token_type values:

{
  "access_token": "eyJz93a...k4laUWw",
  "refresh_token": "GEbRxBN...edjnXbL",
  "id_token": "eyJ0XAi...4faeEoQ",
  "token_type": "Bearer"
}

Validate your tokens before saving them. To learn how, read Validate ID Tokens and Validate Access Tokens.

ID tokens contain user information that must be decoded and extracted.

Access tokens are used to call the Auth0 Authentication API’s /userinfo endpoint or another API. If you are calling your own API, the first thing your API will need to do is verify the Access token.

Refresh tokens are used to obtain a new access token or ID token after the previous one has expired. The refresh_token will only be present in the response if you included the offline_access scope and enabled Allow Offline Access for your API in the Dashboard.

Refresh tokens must be stored securely since they allow a user to remain authenticated essentially forever.

Make an API call

To call your API from a regular web application, the application must pass the retrieved access token as a Bearer token in the Authorization header of your HTTP request.

cURL

curl --request GET \
  --url https://myapi.com/api \
  --header 'authorization: Bearer {accessToken}' \
  --header 'content-type: application/json'

Exchange refresh token

You have already received a refresh token if you’ve been following this tutorial and completed the following:

• configured your API to allow offline access
• included the offline_access scope when you initiated the authentication request through the authorize endpoint.

You can use the Refresh Token to get a new access token. Usually, a user will need a new access token only after the previous one expires or when gaining access to a new resource for the first time. It’s bad practice to call the endpoint to get a new access token every time you call an API, and Auth0 maintains rate limits that will throttle the amount of requests to the endpoint that can be executed using the same token from the same IP.

To refresh your token, make a POST request to the /oauth/token endpoint in the Authentication API, using grant_type=refresh_token.

Example POST to token URL

cURL

curl --request POST \
  --url 'https://{yourDomain}/oauth/token' \
  --header 'content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
  --data grant_type=refresh_token \
  --data 'client_id={yourClientId}' \
  --data 'refresh_token={yourRefreshToken}'

Parameters

Parameter Name	Description
grant_type	Set this to refresh_token.
client_id	Your application’s Client ID. You can find this value in your Application Settings.
refresh_token	The refresh token to use.
scope	(optional) A space-delimited list of requested scope permissions. If not sent, the original scopes will be used; otherwise you can request a reduced set of scopes. Note that this must be URL encoded.

Response

If all goes well, you’ll receive an HTTP 200 response with a payload containing a new access_token, its lifetime in seconds (expires_in), granted scope values, and token_type. If the scope of the initial token included openid, then the response will also include a new id_token:

{
  "access_token": "eyJ...MoQ",
  "expires_in": 86400,
  "scope": "openid offline_access",
  "id_token": "eyJ...0NE",
  "token_type": "Bearer"
}

Validate your tokens before saving them. To learn how, read Validate ID Tokens and Validate Access Tokens.

Sample use cases

Customize tokens

You can use Auth0 Actions to modify the scopes of an access token and/or add custom claims to access and ID tokens. To learn more about Actions, see Understand how Auth0 Actions Work.

To do so, add the following Post-Login Action, which will run after the user authenticates:

exports.onExecutePostLogin = async (event, api) => {
  // Add custom claims to Access Token and ID Token
  api.accessToken.setCustomClaim('https://foo/bar', 'value');
  api.idToken.setCustomClaim('https://fiz/baz', 'some other value');

  // Modify the scope of the Access Token
  api.accessToken.addScope('foo');
  api.accessToken.addScope('bar');
};

Auth0 returns profile information in a structured claim format as defined by the OpenID Connect (OIDC) specification. This means that custom claims added to ID tokens or access tokens must conform to guidelines and restrictions to avoid possible collisions.

Learn more

• OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework
• OpenID Connect Protocol
• Tokens