Auth Flows

When creating application integrations, accessing customer’s data is a required step. Using Cobalt’s auth flows this process becomes both quick and heavily customizable.

Pre-requisites

Below are a few pre-requisites that you need to do before choosing an Auth Flow:

1. Create Linked Account

In order to enable your customer to connect to third party app, you first need to create a Linked account for them using a unique identifier.

Know more about Linked Accounts and how you can create one in the guide here.

We recommend you create a linked account at the same time as your customer signs up within your app.

2. Generate Session Token

Generate a Session Token for your Linked Account.

The session token gets expired in 24 hours. Please make sure you generate a new token in every new session or within 24 hours.

Auth flow integration options

Cobalt provides 3 different ways for Auth flow of integrations

Hosted flow is a no-code solution, so you don’t need to build your own UI to handle the integration authentication. It handles the following features:

List all enabled applications
Handle the Auth flow
Manage integration configuration for your end user.

Dynamic field mapping feature is currently not supported in the Hosted auth flow.

To get started, follow the 2 steps:

Generate Hosted URL

To use Hosted flow, you will need to first get the hosted URL. This can be achieved by making a POST request to the Create Hosted URL API.

Check out the Cobalt’s API Reference for more details.

Redirect to Hosted portal

The generated URL can be then used to redirect the user to the Hosted UI, or can be embedded within your UI. Your user can select the application they want to connect and perform authentication.

You can modify the UI of Hosted Portal using the hosted_properties.

Property	Description
color	Modify the theme color of Cobalt connect
name	Display name of your end customer
bgColor	Background Colour of your end customer

Cobalt provides APIs and SDK functions that allow your customers to connect your platform with the third party applications.

The general steps to build your own flow are:

Install the Cobalt Frontend SDK for JavaScript that you want to use. You can install by either using npm package manager or directly in browser by using the script tag.

<!-- use a specific version -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@cobaltio/cobalt-js@3.0.1"></script>

<!-- use a version range instead of a specific version -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@cobaltio/cobalt-js@3"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@cobaltio/cobalt-js@3.0"></script>

<!-- omit the version completely to use the latest one -->
<!-- you should NOT use this in production -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@cobaltio/cobalt-js"></script>

Initialize the javascript SDK using the Session token.

Learn more about Cobalt’s JS SDK and how to initialize it here.

Cobalt provides the flexibility for you to manage your customers’ application connections. The .connect() method lets your customers to connect to an application platform, authorizing you to access the platform APIs and data on their behalf.

cobalt.connect("slack") // opens a new tab for oauth apps
cobalt.connect("twilio", {
  number: <"Registered number">,
  sid: "ACCOUNT_SID",
}) // saves the auth data for key based apps

The .disconnect() method similarly, lets the user to disconnect from the application platform, revoking the authorization and deleting any and all configurations of the Linked account saved for that particular application.

cobalt.disconnect("slack")

Once the user has successfully authenticated in their platform, he is redirected back to your app integration page. Use the .config() method to find an exisiting config or creating a new config for the linked account.

cobalt.config({
  slug: "slack",
  config_id: "OPTIONAL_ID_FOR_THIS_CONFIG",
  labels: {}, // optional dynamic labels
})

The .config() method provides you with all the published workflows and settings input for the user. The user can now enable the workflows, enter data for the settings and map fields. These updates to the config can be made using the .updateConfig() method.

cobalt.updateConfig({
  slug: "slack",
  config_id: "OPTIONAL_ID_FOR_THIS_CONFIG",
  fields: {
    "64da0b57c9ae95561bb0a24d": "C044U7Q074J"
  },
  workflows: [
    {
      id: "64d1fac58716dc5065127ffe",
      enabled: true,
      fields: {
        "64da0b57c9ae95561bb0a24f": "C044U7Q074J"
      }

    }
  ]
})

Authorization journey

Cobalt lets you take the authorization for customer’s data in 3 simple steps:

Open the auth flow portal for the customer using any of the above mentioned integration options.
Customer provides consent or API Credentials for the respective app.
Customer configures the data required for the connection, such as selecting specific integration settings.

And done! Customer has now successfully connected the application(s) and can now make use of the published orchestrations.

Documentation

Implementation Guide

Concepts

Pre-requisites

Auth flow integration options

Authorization journey

Documentation

Implementation Guide

Concepts

​Pre-requisites

​Auth flow integration options

​Authorization journey

Pre-requisites

Auth flow integration options

Authorization journey