Before you start

This guide walks you through setting up authentication and authorization in your Vue.js apps with Auth0. If you are new to Auth0, check our Overview. For a complete picture of authentication and authorization for all Single Page Applications, check our SPA + API documentation.

Auth0 uses OAuth. If you want to learn more about the OAuth flows used by Single Page Applications, read about Authentication for Client-side Web Apps.

Get Your Application Keys

When you signed up for Auth0, you created a new client.

Your application needs some details about this client to communicate with Auth0. You can get these details from the Settings section for your client in the Auth0 dashboard.

You need the following information:

• Client ID
• Domain

Configure Callback URLs

A callback URL is a URL in your application where Auth0 redirects the user after they have authenticated.

You need to whitelist the callback URL for your app in the Allowed Callback URLs field in your Client Settings. If you do not set any callback URL, your users will see a mismatch error when they log in.

Install auth0.js

You need the auth0.js library to integrate Auth0 into your application.

Install auth0.js using npm or yarn.

# installation with npm
npm install --save auth0-js

# installation with yarn
yarn add auth0-js

Once you install auth0.js, add it to your build system or bring it in to your project with a script tag.

<script type="text/javascript" src="node_modules/auth0-js/build/auth0.js"></script>

If you do not want to use a package manager, you can retrieve auth0.js from Auth0's CDN.

<script src="https://cdn.auth0.com/js/auth0/8.10.1/auth0.min.js"></script>

Add Authentication with Auth0

The Auth0 hosted login page is the easiest way to set up authentication in your application. We recommend using the Auth0 hosted login page for the best experience, best security and the fullest array of features. This guide will use it to provide a way for your users to log in to your Vue.js application.

When a user logs in, Auth0 returns three items:

• access_token: to learn more, see the access token documentation
• id_token: to learn more, see the ID token documentation
• expires_in: the number of seconds before the access token expires

You can use these items in your application to set up and manage authentication.

Create an Authentication Service

The best way to manage and coordinate the tasks necessary for user authentication is to create a reusable service. With the service in place, you'll be able to call its methods throughout your application. The name for it is at your discretion, but in these examples it will be called AuthService and the filename will be AuthService.js. An instance of the WebAuth object from auth0.js can be created in the service.

Create a service and instantiate auth0.WebAuth. Provide a method called login which calls the authorize method from auth0.js.

// src/Auth/AuthService.js

import auth0 from 'auth0-js'

export default class AuthService {

  constructor () {
    this.login = this.login.bind(this)
  }

  auth0 = new auth0.WebAuth({
    domain: 'YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN',
    clientID: 'YOUR_CLIENT_ID',
    redirectUri: 'http://localhost:8080/callback',
    audience: 'https://YOUR_AUTH0_DOMAIN/userinfo',
    responseType: 'token id_token',
    scope: 'openid'
  })

  login () {
    this.auth0.authorize()
  }
}

Finish Out the Service

Add some additional methods to the Auth service to fully handle authentication in the app.

// src/Auth/AuthService.js

import auth0 from 'auth0-js'
import EventEmitter from 'EventEmitter'
import router from './../router'

export default class AuthService {

  authenticated = this.isAuthenticated()
  authNotifier = new EventEmitter()

  constructor () {
    this.login = this.login.bind(this)
    this.setSession = this.setSession.bind(this)
    this.logout = this.logout.bind(this)
    this.isAuthenticated = this.isAuthenticated.bind(this)
  }

  // ...
  handleAuthentication () {
    this.auth0.parseHash((err, authResult) => {
      if (authResult && authResult.accessToken && authResult.idToken) {
        this.setSession(authResult)
        router.replace('home')
      } else if (err) {
        router.replace('home')
        console.log(err)
      }
    })
  }

  setSession (authResult) {
    // Set the time that the access token will expire at
    let expiresAt = JSON.stringify(
      authResult.expiresIn * 1000 + new Date().getTime()
    )
    localStorage.setItem('access_token', authResult.accessToken)
    localStorage.setItem('id_token', authResult.idToken)
    localStorage.setItem('expires_at', expiresAt)
    this.authNotifier.emit('authChange', { authenticated: true })
  }

  logout () {
    // Clear access token and ID token from local storage
    localStorage.removeItem('access_token')
    localStorage.removeItem('id_token')
    localStorage.removeItem('expires_at')
    this.userProfile = null
    this.authNotifier.emit('authChange', false)
    // navigate to the home route
    router.replace('home')
  }

  isAuthenticated () {
    // Check whether the current time is past the
    // access token's expiry time
    let expiresAt = JSON.parse(localStorage.getItem('expires_at'))
    return new Date().getTime() < expiresAt
  }
}

The service now includes several other methods for handling authentication.

• handleAuthentication - looks for an authentication result in the URL hash and processes it with the parseHash method from auth0.js
• setSession - sets the user's access_token, id_token, and a time at which the access_token will expire
• logout - removes the user's tokens from browser storage
• isAuthenticated - checks whether the expiry time for the access_token has passed

About the Authentication Service

When you set up the AuthService service, you create an instance of the auth0.WebAuth object. In that instance, you can define the following:

• Configuration for your client and domain
• Response type, to show that you need a user's access token and an ID token after authentication
• Audience and scope, which specify that authentication must be OIDC-conformant
• The URL where you want to redirect your users after authentication.

Your users authenticate at the Auth0 hosted login page. They are then redirected back to your application. Their redirect URLs contain hash fragments with each user's authentication information:

• access_token
• id_token
• expires_in

You can get the tokens from the URL using the parseHash method in the auth0.js library. You can save the values in local storage with the setSession method. The setSession method uses the expires_in value from the URL hash fragment to calculate when the user's access token expires.

Authentication using JSON Web Tokens is stateless. This means that when you use it, no information about the user's session is stored on your server.

To set up a session for the user on the client side, save the following information in browser storage:

• access_token
• id_token
• expires_in

To log the user out, you must remove these values from the storage.

You need to provide a way for your application to recognize if the user is authenticated. To do that, use the isAuthenticated method to check if the user's access token has expired. The user is no longer authenticated when the expiry time of their access token passes.

Provide a Login Control

Provide a component with controls for the user to log in and log out.

// src/App.vue

<template>
  <div>
    <nav class="navbar navbar-default">
      <div class="container-fluid">
        <div class="navbar-header">
          <a class="navbar-brand" href="#">Auth0 - Vue</a>

          <router-link :to="'/'"
            class="btn btn-primary btn-margin">
              Home
          </router-link>

          <button
            class="btn btn-primary btn-margin"
            v-if="!authenticated"
            @click="login()">
              Log In
          </button>

          <button
            class="btn btn-primary btn-margin"
            v-if="authenticated"
            @click="logout()">
              Log Out
          </button>

        </div>
      </div>
    </nav>

    <div class="container">
      <router-view 
        :auth="auth" 
        :authenticated="authenticated">
      </router-view>
    </div>
  </div>
</template>

<script>

import AuthService from './auth/AuthService'

const auth = new AuthService()

const { login, logout, authenticated, authNotifier } = auth

export default {
  name: 'app',
  data () {
    authNotifier.on('authChange', authState => {
      this.authenticated = authState.authenticated
    })
    return {
      auth,
      authenticated
    }
  },
  methods: {
    login,
    logout
  }
}
</script>

<style>
@import '../node_modules/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css';
</style>

The @click events on the Log In and Log Out buttons make the appropriate calls to the AuthService to allow the user to log in and log out. Notice that these buttons are conditionally hidden and shown depending on whether or not the user is currently authenticated.

When the Log In button is clicked, the user will be redirected to Auth0's hosted login page.

Add a Callback Component

Using Auth0's hosted login page means that users are taken away from your application to a page hosted by Auth0. After they successfully authenticate, they are returned to your application where a client-side session is set for them.

You can select any URL in your application for your users to return to. We recommend creating a dedicated callback route. If you create a single callback route:

• You don't have to whitelist many, sometimes unknown, callback URLs.
• You can display a loading indicator while the application sets up a client-side session.

When a user authenticates at Auth0's hosted login page and is then redirected back to your application, their authentication information will be contained in a URL hash fragment. The handleAuthentication method in the AuthService is responsbile for processing the hash.

Create a component named CallbackComponent and populate it with a loading indicator. The component should also call handleAuthentication from the AuthService.

// src/components/Callback.vue

<template>
  <div class="spinner">
    <img src="../assets/loading.svg" alt="loading"/>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    name: 'callback',
    props: ['auth'],
    data () {
      this.auth.handleAuthentication()
      return {}
    }
  }
</script>

After authentication, users will be taken to the /callback route for a brief time where they will be shown a loading indicator. During this time, their client-side session will be set, after which they will be redirected to the /home route.