React Native OIDC Authentication

OIDC authentication for React Native with shared core and ready-to-use implementations for Expo and Bare React Native.

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Packages

• react-native-oidc-auth-core: framework-agnostic core with login, logout, refresh, and secure token storage contracts.
• react-native-oidc-auth-expo: Expo implementation using expo-auth-session and expo-secure-store.
• react-native-oidc-auth: Bare React Native implementation using react-native-app-auth and react-native-keychain.

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Table of Contents

• Why
• Features
• Install
• Getting Started
  • Create an OidcAuth instance
  • Provider setup
  • Hook usage
• Advanced
• Experimental
• Examples
• Notes
• License

Why

While integrating a React Native app with Keycloak, the only available library I found (react-native-keycloak) was unmaintained. I found other OIDC auth clients that worked well, such as:

• react-native-app-auth
• expo-auth-session

However, both lacked:

• Automatic token refresh
• Secure token storage integration

This library fills those gaps and provides an implementation for Expo and Bare React Native.

Features

• Login, logout, and token refresh
• Secure token storage
• Automatic token refresh
• Implementation for Expo and Bare RN
• Optional registration flow (Keycloak-tested)

Install

Expo apps:

npm i react-native-oidc-auth-expo

Bare React Native apps:

npm i react-native-oidc-auth

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Getting Started

Create an OidcAuth instance

Configure your OIDC provider:

import { createOidcAuth, type OidcConfiguration, setTracingLogger } from 'react-native-oidc-auth'; // or react-native-oidc-auth-expo

const issuer = `${OIDC_URL}/realms/${OIDC_REALM}`;

const config: OidcConfiguration = {
  issuer,
  clientId: CLIENT_ID ?? '',
  redirectUrl: REDIRECT_URI ?? '',
  postLogoutRedirectUrl: REDIRECT_URI ?? '',
  scopes: ['openid', 'profile'],
  // Bare RN only:
  dangerouslyAllowInsecureHttpRequests: __DEV__,
};

// Optional: Configure tracing
setTracingLogger(tracingLog);

export const oidcAuth = createOidcAuth(config);

Provider setup

Wrap your app with the provider:

import React from 'react';
import { OidcAuthProvider } from 'react-native-oidc-auth'; // or react-native-oidc-auth-expo
import { Main } from './components/main';
import { oidcAuth } from './lib/oidc-auth';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <OidcAuthProvider instance={oidcAuth}>
      <Main />
    </OidcAuthProvider>
  );
}

Hook usage

Use the hook to access auth state and actions:

import React from 'react';
import { View, Text, Button } from 'react-native';
import { useOidcAuth } from 'react-native-oidc-auth'; // or react-native-oidc-auth-expo

export const Main: React.FC = () => {
  const { isAuthenticated, user, login, logout } = useOidcAuth();

  return (
    <View>
      {isAuthenticated ? (
        <>
          <Text>Home</Text>
          <Text>Email: {user?.email}</Text>
          <Button onPress={logout} title="Logout" />
        </>
      ) : (
        <>
          <Text>Login</Text>
          <Button onPress={login} title="Login" />
        </>
      )}
    </View>
  );
};

Advanced

You can depend on react-native-oidc-auth-core to build your own adapter for alternative auth/secure storage libraries.

Experimental

This feature does not perform dynamic client registration.

Instead, it allows you to directly display the registration page and retrieve the token after completing the registration flow (tested with Keycloak only).

1. Set the registration endpoint:

const config: OidcConfiguration = {
  // ...
  registrationPageEndpoint: `${issuer}/protocol/openid-connect/registrations`,
};

2. Call register from your UI:

import React from "react";
import { View, Text, Button } from "react-native";
import { useOidcAuth } from "react-native-oidc-auth";

export const Main: React.FC = () => {
  const { isAuthenticated, login, register } = useOidcAuth();

  return (
    <View>
      {!isAuthenticated ? (
        <>
          <Text>Login</Text>
          <Button onPress={login} title="Login" />
          <Button onPress={register} title="Register" />
        </>
      ) : (
        <Text>Home</Text>
      )}
    </View>
  );
};

Keycloak flow overview:

• User is redirected to the registration page.
• After submitting, Keycloak sends a verification email.
• The email link returns to the app; the token is stored, and the user is authenticated.

Examples

See examples/react-native and examples/expo for demo apps.

Notes

The logic in the core library is adapted from Keycloak JS.

License

MIT