The information you will need:

  • Auth Server URL: https://auth.civic.com/oauth

  • Client ID: Provided on sign-up at auth.civic.com

  • Scopes: openid,email,profile

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The Civic Auth Server

At its core, Civic Auth is an OAuth 2.0 auth server. It supports the authorization code grant type with PKCE.

If you are looking for other OAuth 2 grant types, we’d like to hear from you.

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Sample Call to the OAuth Server

To trigger a login process, simply call the oauth server as follows:

https://auth.civic.com/oauth
    ?response_type=code
    &client_id={clientId}
    &redirect_uri={redirectUri}
    &scope=openid,email,profile
    &state={state}
    &code_challenge={codeChallenge}
    &code_challenge_method=S256

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Query Parameters:

  • client_id: Your application’s unique identifier provided by Civic Auth.

  • redirect_uri: The URL to which users should be redirected after authentication.

  • scope: The permissions your application is requesting (e.g., email, profile, openid).

  • state: A random string to maintain state between the request and callback.

  • code_challenge: A code challenge derived from the code verifier for PKCE.

Civic Auth requires the use of PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange), so thecode_challenge parameter is obligatory. For more information, see PKCE (Proof Key for Code Exchange).

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Example

See below for an example of using Civic Auth with a third-party library: OAuth 4 WebAPI

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Refreshing a session

The Civic OAuth server supports the token refresh flow by calling the oauth server as follows:

https://auth.civic.com/oauth/token
    ?refresh_token={refreshToken}
    &client_id={clientId}
    &grant_type=refresh_token

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Query Parameters:

  • client_id: Your application’s unique identifier provided by Civic Auth.

  • refresh_token: The refresh token from the user’s existing session

  • grant_type: a string ‘refresh_token’

If the refresh token is valid this will return a JSON response containing updated tokens e.g.

{
    "access_token": <JWT with sub=userId>
    "id_token": <JWT with sub=userId, profile info & forwardedTokens>
    "refresh_token": <string>
    "expires_in": <how many seconds until the token expires>\
}

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Usage

The Civic Auth SDK is designed to simplify front-end integration, with optimized support for React and Next.js. However, if your frontend uses another framework, you can still retrieve user information after login by inspecting the ID token.

The ID token is produced after completing the login process. A common pattern is for your backend to pass that token to your frontend as a cookie.

Here’s an example of how to access user information in vanilla JavaScript by reading the ID token cookie:

import jwt from "jsonwebtoken";

function getUserFromToken() {
  const cookie = document.cookie
    .split("; ")
    .find(row => row.startsWith("id_token="));

  if (!cookie) return null;

  const token = cookie.split("=")[1];
  return jwt.decode(token);
}

const user = getUserFromToken();
console.log(user); // Log user info or use it in your app