Using Firebase with Web3Auth React Native SDK

This guide will cover the basics of how to use the Web3Auth React Native SDK in your React Native application.

Live Demo: Android iOS

Repository: https://github.com/Web3Auth/web3auth-pnp-examples/tree/main/react-native/rn-bare-firebase-example

Quick Start​

npx degit Web3Auth/web3auth-pnp-examples/react-native/rn-bare-firebase-example w3a-rn-bare-firebase-demo && cd w3a-rn-bare-firebase-demo && npm install

# For Android
npm run android
# For iOS
cd ios && pod install && cd .. && npm run ios

How it works?​

When integrating Web3Auth React Native SDK with Firebase the flow looks something like this:

• When a user logs in with Firebase, Firebase sends a JWT id_token to the app. This JWT token is sent to the Web3Auth SDK's login function.

• Finally, on successful validation of the JWT token, Web3Auth SDK will generate a private key for the user, in a self-custodial way, resulting in easy onboarding for your user to the application.

Prerequisites​

• For Web Apps: A basic knowledge of JavaScript is required to use Web3Auth SDK.

• For Mobile Apps: For the Web3Auth Mobile SDKs, you have a choice between iOS, Android, React Native & Flutter. Please refer to the Web3Auth SDK Reference for more information.

• Create a Web3Auth account on the Web3Auth Dashboard

• React Native Release 0.71 and above (for Bare React Native Workflow)

• iOS Platform Target Version 14 and above

• Android Target SDK Version 31 and above

• A Firebase account to be used as Federated Identity Provider.

• A Google Developer account to be used as Identity provider for Firebase.

Setup​

Setup your Firebase Project​

• Go to your Firebase console and create a Web App. Follow this guide on how to setup your Firebase Web App project.

Create a Firebase Project​

• Create a new project by clicking on Add project or use your existing project from Firebase console.

  

• Give your project a name and click on Continue

  

• Finally, click on Create Project

  

Select Authentication Provider​

• Once the project is created. Set up authentication by clicking on the Authentication card from the home screen of your project or choose Authentication under Build from the left sidebar.

  

• From Sign-in method tab, select any provider you wish to enanle. For the purpose of this guide, we'll be enabling Google.

  

• Finally, toggle the enable button and click on Save

  

Configure Firebase for Android​

• Once the project is created and authentication is configured. Let's use Firebase for Android by clicking on the Android button on the home screen of your project.

  

• In the next screen, enter the Android package name and click on Register app button to register the app for Android.

  

• In the Next screen, Download and add config file to your Android Studio Project as shown below. Then Click on Next button.

  

• Next screen shows ways to add Firebase to your application. To make the google-services.json config values accessible to Firebase SDKs, you need the Google services Gradle plugin. We will be adding the buildscript dependency to the <project>/build.gradle file.

  

• Then, in your module (app-level) build.gradle file, add both the google-services plugin and any Firebase SDKs that you want to use in your app:

  

• After adding the plugin and the desired SDKs, sync your Android project with Gradle files.

  

Setup your Web3Auth Dashboard​

• Create a Project from the Project Section of the Web3Auth Developer Dashboard.

  

  • Enter your desired Project name.

  • Select the Product you want to use. For this guide, we'll be using the Plug n Play product.

  • Select the Platform type you want to use. For this guide, we'll be using the Web Application as the platform.

  • Select the Web3Auth Network as Sapphire Devnet. We recommend creating a project in the sapphire_devnet network during development. While moving to a production environment, make sure to convert your project to sapphire_mainnet or any of the legacy mainnet network mainnet, aqua, or cyan network. Otherwise, you'll end up losing users and keys.

  • Select the blockchain(s) you'll be building this project on. For interoperability with Torus Wallets, you have the option of allowing the user's private key to be used in other applications using Torus Wallets (EVM, Solana, XRPL & Casper).

  • Finally, once you create the project, you have the option to whitelist your URLs for the project. Please whitelist the domains where your project will be hosted.

    

Create Firebase Verifier on Web3Auth Dashboard​

• Create a Verifier from the Custom Auth Section of the Web3Auth Developer Dashboard with following configuration:

  • Choose a name of your choice for the verifier identifier. eg. w3a-firebase-verifier
  • Select environment: testnet, mainnet,aqua, or cyan as per your requirement.
  • Select Custom from the Login Provider.
  • Select Sub for the JWT Verifier ID.
  • Enter https://www.googleapis.com/service_accounts/v1/jwk/securetoken@system.gserviceaccount.com as the JWK endpoint for Firebase's idToken.
  • JWT validation fields:
    • iss: https://securetoken.google.com/<firebase-project-id>.
    • aud: <firebase-project-id>
  • Click on Create button to create your verifier. It may take up to 10 minutes to deploy verifier on testnet. You'll receive an email once it's complete.

  

• You will require the verifierName of the newly created verifier and clientId of the Plug and Play Project.

• Add {YOUR_APP_SCHEME}://auth in the Whitelist URL field of the Web3Auth Dashboard.

Configure Deep Link​

buildToolsVersion = "31.0.0"
minSdkVersion = 21
compileSdkVersion = 31
targetSdkVersion = 31

<intent-filter>
  <action android:name="android.intent.action.VIEW" />
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT" />
  <category android:name="android.intent.category.BROWSABLE" />
  # replace with your own scheme
  <data android:scheme="web3authrnexample" />
</intent-filter>

<activity
  android:name=".MainActivity"
  android:label="@string/app_name"
  android:configChanges="keyboard|keyboardHidden|orientation|screenSize|uiMode"
  android:launchMode="singleTask"
  android:windowSoftInputMode="adjustResize"
  android:exported="true">

const scheme = "web3authrnbareexample"; // Or your desired app redirection scheme
const resolvedRedirectUrl = `${scheme}://openlogin`;

const scheme = "web3authrnbareexample"; // Or your desired app redirection scheme
const resolvedRedirectUrl = `${scheme}://openlogin`;

platform :ios, '14'

cd ios && pod install && cd ..

Using the Web3Auth SDK​

To use the Web3Auth SDK, you need to add the dependency of the respective platform SDK of Web3Auth to your project. To know more about the available SDKs, please have a look at this documentation page.

For this guide, we will be talking through the Web3Auth React Native SDK.

Installation​

@web3auth/react-native-sdk​

npm install --save @web3auth/react-native-sdk

yarn add @web3auth/react-native-sdk

pnpm add @web3auth/react-native-sdk

Adding a Web Browser Module​

We will also require a WebBrowser implementation to allow our JS-based SDK to interact with the native APIs, and different extra installation steps depending on whether you are using the bare workflow or managed workflow. Since we're using the SDK with a bare workflow React Native app, you have to install a WebBrowser implementation made by us as a port from the Expo Web Browser Module.

@toruslabs/react-native-web-browser​

npm install --save @toruslabs/react-native-web-browser

yarn add @toruslabs/react-native-web-browser

pnpm add @toruslabs/react-native-web-browser

Adding an EncryptedStorage Module​

We will also require an EncryptedStorage implementation to allow for session management without storing the private key on the device.

npm install --save react-native-encrypted-storage

yarn add react-native-encrypted-storage

pnpm add react-native-encrypted-storage

Initialization​

After Installation, the next step to use Web3Auth is to Initialize the SDK. The Initialization is a two-step process,

• Importing Required Packages
• Instantiating Web3Auth

Please note that these are the most critical steps where you need to pass on different parameters according to the preference of your project. Additionally, Whitelabeling and Custom Authentication have to be configured within this step, if you wish to customize your Web3Auth Instance.

Importing Web3Auth​

You may also import additional types from the SDK to help in the development process.

import Web3Auth, { LOGIN_PROVIDER, OPENLOGIN_NETWORK } from "@web3auth/react-native-sdk";

Importing a WebBrowser implementation​

import * as WebBrowser from "@toruslabs/react-native-web-browser";

Importing a EncryptedStorage implementation​

import EncryptedStorage from "react-native-encrypted-storage";

Instantiating Web3Auth​

It's time to create an instance of Web3Auth in the project.

We need clientId and target Web3Auth network to initialize the web3auth object.

• You can get your clientId from registering (above) on the Developer Dashboard.

• network signifies the network on which the deployed Web3Auth nodes are running. For testing purposes, we have a Sapphire Devnet network. For production usage, you can use the Sapphire Mainnet network.

const web3auth = new Web3Auth(WebBrowser, EncryptedStorage, {
  clientId,
  network: OPENLOGIN_NETWORK.SAPPHIRE_MAINNET, // SAPPHIRE_MAINNET or SAPPHIRE_DEVNET
  loginConfig: {
    // Add login configs corresponding to the provider
    // For firebase/ cognito & other providers, you need to pass the JWT token
    // JWT login
    jwt: {
      verifier: "YOUR_JWT_VERIFIER_NAME", // Please create a verifier on the developer dashboard and pass the name here
      typeOfLogin: "jwt",
    },
    // Add other login providers here
  },
});

Authentication​

Logging in with Firebase​

We're using the React Native Firebase Library for this project. You can follow the official RNFirebase documentation to setup Firebase in your project.

import auth from "@react-native-firebase/auth";
import { GoogleSignin } from "@react-native-google-signin/google-signin";

async function signInWithFirebase() {
  try {
    GoogleSignin.configure({
      webClientId: "461819774167-5iv443bdf5a6pnr2drt4tubaph270obl.apps.googleusercontent.com",
    });
    // Check if your device supports Google Play
    await GoogleSignin.hasPlayServices({ showPlayServicesUpdateDialog: true });
    // Get the user's ID token
    const { idToken } = await GoogleSignin.signIn();
    // Create a Google credential with the token
    const googleCredential = auth.GoogleAuthProvider.credential(idToken);

    // Sign-in the user with the credential
    const res = await auth().signInWithCredential(googleCredential);
    return res;
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(error);
  }
}

Logging in with Web3Auth​

Once initialized, you can use the login function of web3auth to navigate the user to the login process. For each login method, you have to select the loginProvider such as google, facebook, twitch, jwt, email_passwordless etc.

Once a user logs in, the user can access the key by web3auth.privKey(). For EVM Blockchains, the secp256k1 private key is used to sign transactions. We can get an ed25519 compatible private key for other blockchains using web3auth.ed25519Key().

const loginRes = await signInWithFirebase();
const idToken = await loginRes.user.getIdToken(true);

await web3auth.login({
  redirectUrl: resolvedRedirectUrl,
  mfaLevel: "default", // Pass on the MFA level of your choice: default, optional, mandatory, none
  loginProvider: "jwt",
  extraLoginOptions: {
    id_token: "YOUR_JWT_ID_TOKEN", // Please replace with your JWT ID token, generated from Firebase Login
    verifierIdField: "sub", // same as your JWT Verifier ID on the dashboard
  },
});

If you wish you add Multi Factor Authentication, use dApp Share or select Curve for your React Native application, read the linked documentation.

• Multi Factor Authentication
• Using dApp Share
• Selecting Curve

Get the User Profile​

// Assuming the user is logged in, get the user profile from the web3auth object
var userInfo = web3auth.userInfo();

Using the web3Auth.login() function, you can get the details of the logged-in user. Please note that these details are not stored anywhere in Web3Auth network.

Sample userInfo​

{
  "aggregateVerifier": "tkey-google",
  "email": "john@gmail.com",
  "name": "John Dash",
  "profileImage": "https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/Ajjjsdsmdjmnm...",
  "typeOfLogin": "google",
  "verifier": "torus",
  "verifierId": "john@gmail.com",
  "dappShare": "<24 words seed phrase>", // will be sent only incase of custom verifiers
  "idToken": "<jwtToken issued by Web3Auth>",
  "oAuthIdToken": "<jwtToken issued by OAuth Provider>", // will be sent only incase of custom verifiers
  "oAuthAccessToken": "<accessToken issued by OAuth Provider>" // will be sent only incase of custom verifiers
}

Logout​

Use the logout function of web3auth to log the user out.

web3auth.logout();

Interacting with the Blockchain​

Once a user logs in, the user can access the private key by web3auth.privKey(). For EVM Blockchains, the secp256k1 private key is used to sign transactions. We can get an ed25519 compatible private key for other blockchains using web3auth.ed25519Key(). Similar to how we're using this private key in the ethers.js library in this example, you can connect to any other blockchain of your choice.

Troubleshooting React Native issues​

Some commonly faced issues and the ways to fix them are addressed in this troubleshooting guide.

Example code​

The code for the application we developed in this guide can be found in the Web3Auth React Native Example. Check it out and try running it locally yourself!

Questions?​

Ask us on Web3Auth's Community Support Portal