View Source GitHub Tutorial

This is a quick tutorial on how to configure your application to use GitHub for authentication.

First you need to configure an application in your GitHub developer settings:

1. Click the "New OAuth App" button.

2. Set your application name to something that identifies it. You will likely need separate applications for development and production environments, so keep that in mind.

3. Set "Homepage URL" appropriately for your application and environment.

4. In the "Authorization callback URL" section, add your callback URL. The callback URL is generated from the following information:

   • The base URL of the application - in development that would be http://localhost:4000/ but in production will be your application's URL.
   • The mount point of the auth routes in your router - we'll assume /auth.
   • The "subject name" of the resource being authenticated - we'll assume user.
   • The name of the strategy in your configuration. By default this is github.

   This means that the callback URL should look something like http://localhost:4000/auth/user/github/callback.

5. Do not set "Enable Device Flow" unless you know why you want this.

6. Click "Register application".

7. Click "Generate a new client secret".

8. Copy the "Client ID" and "Client secret" somewhere safe, we'll need them soon.

9. Click "Update application".

Next we can configure our resource (assuming you already have everything else set up):

defmodule MyApp.Accounts.User do
  use Ash.Resource,
    extensions: [AshAuthentication],
    domain: MyApp.Accounts

  authentication do
    strategies do
      github do
        client_id MyApp.Secrets
        redirect_uri MyApp.Secrets
        client_secret MyApp.Secrets
      end
    end
  end
end

Because all the configuration values should be kept secret (ie the client_secret) or are likely to be different for each environment we use the AshAuthentication.Secret behaviour to provide them. In this case we're delegating to the OTP application environment, however you may want to use a system environment variable or some other secret store (eg Vault).

defmodule MyApp.Secrets do
  use AshAuthentication.Secret

  def secret_for([:authentication, :strategies, :github, :client_id], MyApp.Accounts.User, _) do
    get_config(:client_id)
  end

  def secret_for([:authentication, :strategies, :github, :redirect_uri], MyApp.Accounts.User, _) do
    get_config(:redirect_uri)
  end

  def secret_for([:authentication, :strategies, :github, :client_secret], MyApp.Accounts.User, _) do
    get_config(:client_secret)
  end

  defp get_config(key) do
    :my_app
    |> Application.get_env(:github, [])
    |> Keyword.fetch(key)
  end
end

The values for this configuration should be:

• client_id - the client ID copied from the GitHub settings page.
• redirect_uri - the URL to the generated auth routes in your application (eg http://localhost:4000/auth).
• client_secret the client secret copied from the GitHub settings page.

Lastly, we need to add a register action to your user resource. This is defined as an upsert so that it can register new users, or update information for returning users. The default name of the action is register_with_ followed by the strategy name. In our case that is register_with_github.

The register action takes two arguments, user_info and the oauth_tokens.

• user_info contains the GET /user response from GitHub which you can use to populate your user attributes as needed.
• oauth_tokens contains the POST /login/oauth/access_token response from GitHub
  • you may want to store these if you intend to call the GitHub API on behalf of the user.

defmodule MyApp.Accounts.User do
  require Ash.Resource.Change.Builtins
  use Ash.Resource,
    extensions: [AshAuthentication],
    domain: MyApp.Accounts

  # ...

  actions do
    create :register_with_github do
      argument :user_info, :map, allow_nil?: false
      argument :oauth_tokens, :map, allow_nil?: false
      upsert? true
      upsert_identity :unique_email

      # Required if you have token generation enabled.
      change AshAuthentication.GenerateTokenChange

      # Required if you have the `identity_resource` configuration enabled.
      change AshAuthentication.Strategy.OAuth2.IdentityChange

      change fn changeset, _ ->
        user_info = Ash.Changeset.get_argument(changeset, :user_info)

        Ash.Changeset.change_attributes(changeset, Map.take(user_info, ["email"]))
      end

      # Required if you're using the password & confirmation strategies
      upsert_fields []
      change set_attribute(:confirmed_at, &DateTime.utc_now/0)
      change after_action(fn _changeset, user, _context ->
        case user.confirmed_at do
          nil -> {:error, "Unconfirmed user exists already"}
          _ -> {:ok, user}
        end
      end)
    end
  end

  # ...

end

Ensure you set the hashed_password to allow_nil? if you are also using the password strategy.

defmodule MyApp.Accounts.User do
  # ...
  attributes do
    # ...
    attribute :hashed_password, :string, allow_nil?: true, sensitive?: true
  end
  # ...
end

And generate and run migrations in that case.

mix ash.codegen make_hashed_password_nullable
mix ash.migrate