Example needed for calling function with authorization headers

Get Involved Debugging & Dev Problem Solving
1

Hi.

Would anyone have an example of how to obtain the required authorization headers when calling an authenticated function from the front-end?

I understand the following is needed

Authorization: Bearer myJWT.accesstoken.signature
auth-provider: dbAuth
Content-Type: application/json

Along with a dbAuth cookie.

This is highlighted in the doco but I don’t know how the front-end can obtain the information for these headers.

Many thanks
Oide

2

May I ask that if this is an authenticated function and you are accessing it from the web side, why not simply make it a GraphQL service?

3

But, you can get the token etc from the useAuth hook just like you can deconstruct and get the login command, isAuthenticated check, currentUser etc.

See getToken here https://github.com/redwoodjs/redwood/blob/58a7a8fe7399f721408d4d1a7050a25f3ef81cef/packages/auth-providers/dbAuth/web/src/dbAuth.ts#L82

The cookie should be sent as part of the request like any other cookie assuming CORS is respected and it should be since dbAuth’s handler is just a function like this would be.

Be sure to pass the auth-provider in the header as per the documentation.

4

Hi
Thanks for your reply. I am calling an external rest based API from my function so I didn’t think a graphql service would be appropriate.

5

Hi. Thanks. I’ve figured out how to get the token using getToken and I am sending this in the request. However, since I am using dbAuth, I think I need to send the dbAuth cookie. Unfortunately I don’t know how to access the dbAuth cookie.

6

It’s completely appropriate.

The Prisma db is an sdk/client that interacts with external info — a database.

Using any other client/sdk that fetches or interacts with data like any other api is absolutely appropriate to be a service and part of your GraphQL api. In fact it’s encouraged.

Just custom write the sdl as a query and the type of the info it returns.

7

@oidebrett I recommend you read through this how-to: Using a Third Party API | RedwoodJS Docs

Especially the part on server-side-api-integration

8

Thank you David and Tobbe. I took you excellent advice and moved away from a function for my api call to using a graphql service. I actually took the opportunity of creating a database table to log apicalls per user so having a graphql service is a better choice. I now call my api from within my graphql service. Thanks a million for the direction.

9

Nice

Your addition of keeping a log/audit for the responses is a great one.

You can use to to do retries on failures or even cache the results and a timestamp and only refetch from the outside services wheb the data is stale to limit requests.

Glad it’s working well.