Authenticate Using Twitter in JavaScript

You can let your users authenticate with Firebase using their Twitter accounts by integrating Twitter authentication into your app. You can integrate Twitter authentication either by using the Firebase SDK to carry out the sign-in flow, or by carrying out the Twitter OAuth flow manually and passing the resulting access token and secret to Firebase.

Before you begin

1. Add Firebase to your JavaScript project.
2. Register your app as a developer application on Twitter and get your app's API Key and API Secret.
3. Enable Twitter Login:
   1. In the Firebase console, open the Auth section.
   2. On the Sign in method tab, enable the Twitter sign-in method and specify the API Key and API Secret you got from Twitter.
   3. Then, make sure your Firebase OAuth redirect URI (e.g. my-app-12345.firebaseapp.com/__/auth/handler) is set as your Callback URL in your app's settings page on your Twitter app's config.

Handle the sign-in flow with the Firebase SDK

If you are building a web app, the easiest way to authenticate your users with Firebase using their Twitter accounts is to handle the sign-in flow with the Firebase JavaScript SDK. (If you want to authenticate a user in Node.js or other non-browser environment, you must handle the sign-in flow manually.)

To handle the sign-in flow with the Firebase JavaScript SDK, follow these steps:

1. Create an instance of the Twitter provider object:

   var provider = new firebase.auth.TwitterAuthProvider();
   

2. Optional: Specify additional custom OAuth provider parameters that you want to send with the OAuth request. To add a custom parameter, call setCustomParameters on the initialized provider with an object containing the key as specified by the OAuth provider documentation and the corresponding value. For example:

   provider.setCustomParameters({
     'lang': 'es'
   });
   

   Reserved required OAuth parameters are not allowed and will be ignored. See the authentication provider reference for more details.
3. Authenticate with Firebase using the Twitter provider object. You can prompt your users to sign in with their Twitter accounts either by opening a pop-up window or by redirecting to the sign-in page. The redirect method is preferred on mobile devices.
   • To sign in with a pop-up window, call signInWithPopup:

     firebase.auth().signInWithPopup(provider).then(function(result) {
       // This gives you a the Twitter OAuth 1.0 Access Token and Secret.
       // You can use these server side with your app's credentials to access the Twitter API.
       var token = result.credential.accessToken;
       var secret = result.credential.secret;
       // The signed-in user info.
       var user = result.user;
       // ...
     }).catch(function(error) {
       // Handle Errors here.
       var errorCode = error.code;
       var errorMessage = error.message;
       // The email of the user's account used.
       var email = error.email;
       // The firebase.auth.AuthCredential type that was used.
       var credential = error.credential;
       // ...
     });
     

     Also notice that you can retrieve the Twitter provider's OAuth token which can be used to fetch additional data using the Twitter APIs.

     This is also where you can catch and handle errors. For a list of error codes have a look at the Auth Reference Docs.

   • To sign in by redirecting to the sign-in page, call signInWithRedirect:

     firebase.auth().signInWithRedirect(provider);
     

     Then, you can also retrieve the Twitter provider's OAuth token by calling getRedirectResult when your page loads:

     firebase.auth().getRedirectResult().then(function(result) {
       if (result.credential) {
         // This gives you a the Twitter OAuth 1.0 Access Token and Secret.
         // You can use these server side with your app's credentials to access the Twitter API.
         var token = result.credential.accessToken;
         var secret = result.credential.secret;
         // ...
       }
       // The signed-in user info.
       var user = result.user;
     }).catch(function(error) {
       // Handle Errors here.
       var errorCode = error.code;
       var errorMessage = error.message;
       // The email of the user's account used.
       var email = error.email;
       // The firebase.auth.AuthCredential type that was used.
       var credential = error.credential;
       // ...
     });
     

     This is also where you can catch and handle errors. For a list of error codes have a look at the Auth Reference Docs.

// Step 1.
// User tries to sign in to Twitter.
auth.signInWithPopup(new firebase.auth.TwitterAuthProvider()).catch(function(error) {
  // An error happened.
  if (error.code === 'auth/account-exists-with-different-credential') {
    // Step 2.
    // User's email already exists.
    // The pending Twitter credential.
    var pendingCred = error.credential;
    // The provider account's email address.
    var email = error.email;
    // Get registered providers for this email.
    auth.fetchProvidersForEmail(email).then(function(providers) {
      // Step 3.
      // If the user has several providers,
      // the first provider in the list will be the "recommended" provider to use.
      if (providers[0] === 'password') {
        // Asks the user his password.
        // In real scenario, you should handle this asynchronously.
        var password = promptUserForPassword(); // TODO: implement promptUserForPassword.
        auth.signInWithEmailAndPassword(email, password).then(function(user) {
          // Step 4a.
          return user.link(pendingCred);
        }).then(function() {
          // Twitter account successfully linked to the existing Firebase user.
          goToApp();
        });
        return;
      }
      // All the other cases are external providers.
      // Construct provider object for that provider.
      // TODO: implement getProviderForProviderId.
      var provider = getProviderForProviderId(providers[0]);
      // At this point, you should let the user know that he already has an account
      // but with a different provider, and let him validate the fact he wants to
      // sign in with this provider.
      // Sign in to provider. Note: browsers usually block popup triggered asynchronously,
      // so in real scenario you should ask the user to click on a "continue" button
      // that will trigger the signInWithPopup.
      auth.signInWithPopup(provider).then(function(result) {
        // Remember that the user may have signed in with an account that has a different email
        // address than the first one. This can happen as Firebase doesn't control the provider's
        // sign in flow and the user is free to login using whichever account he owns.
        // Step 4b.
        // Link to Twitter credential.
        // As we have access to the pending credential, we can directly call the link method.
        result.user.link(pendingCred).then(function() {
          // Twitter account successfully linked to the existing Firebase user.
          goToApp();
        });
      });
    });
  }
});

Handle the sign-in flow manually

You can also authenticate with Firebase using a Twitter account by handling the sign-in flow by calling the Twitter OAuth endpoints:

1. Integrate Twitter authentication into your app by following the developer's documentation. At the end of the Twitter sign-in flow, you will receive an OAuth access token and an OAuth secret.
2. If you need to sign in on a Node.js application, send the OAuth access token and the OAuth secret to the Node.js application.
3. After a user successfully signs in with Twitter, exchange the OAuth access token and OAuth secret for a Firebase credential:

   var credential = firebase.auth.TwitterAuthProvider.credential(token, secret);
   

4. Authenticate with Firebase using the Firebase credential:

   firebase.auth().signInWithCredential(credential).catch(function(error) {
     // Handle Errors here.
     var errorCode = error.code;
     var errorMessage = error.message;
     // The email of the user's account used.
     var email = error.email;
     // The firebase.auth.AuthCredential type that was used.
     var credential = error.credential;
     // ...
   });

Next steps

After a user signs in for the first time, a new user account is created and linked to the credentials—that is, the user name and password, or auth provider information—the user signed in with. This new account is stored as part of your Firebase project, and can be used to identify a user across every app in your project, regardless of how the user signs in.

• In your apps, the recommended way to know the auth status of your user is to set an observer on the Auth object. You can then get the user's basic profile information from the User object. See Manage Users.

• In your Firebase Realtime Database and Firebase Storage Security Rules, you can get the signed-in user's unique user ID from the auth variable, and use it to control what data a user can access.

You can allow users to sign in to your app using multiple authentication providers by linking auth provider credentials to an existing user account.

To sign out a user, call signOut:

firebase.auth().signOut().then(function() {
  // Sign-out successful.
}, function(error) {
  // An error happened.
});