Sign in with Apple Tutorial, Part 4: Web and Other Platforms

The fourth part of a series Sign in with Apple (And maybe the last part). This part is less related to us, iOS developer, let's explore it to see what we might need to do to support this on web and other platforms.

Behind the scene #

As I remembered, Apple didn't mention OAuth or OpenID Connect in their WWDC session or documentation. Luckily Apple didn't introduce their own wheel but adopt the existing open standards OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (Hybrid Flow). They use the same terminology and API calls. If you're familiar with these technologies, Sign in with Apple shouldn't be a problem for you. If you aren't familiar with OAuth and OpenID Connect, don't worry. I will guide you through all of the flow and dance needed.

Let's begin from the frontend, the button.

Configuring Your Webpage for Sign In with Apple #

Ensure your webpage is ready to authorize users through Sign In with Apple.

Embed Sign In with Apple JS in Your Webpage #

Use the script tag and link to Apple’s hosted version of the Sign In with Apple JS framework:

< script type = "text/javascript" src = "https://appleid.cdn-apple.com/appleauth/static/jsapi/appleid/1/en_US/appleid.auth.js" > < / script >

< html >

< head >

< meta name = "appleid-signin-client-id" content = "[CLIENT_ID]" >

< meta name = "appleid-signin-scope" content = "[SCOPES]" >

< meta name = "appleid-signin-redirect-uri" content = "[REDIRECT_URI]" >

< meta name = "appleid-signin-state" content = "[STATE]" >

< / head >

< body >

< div id = "appleid-signin" class = "signin-button" data - color = "black" data - border = "true" data - type = "sign in" > < / div >

< script type = "text/javascript" src = "https://appleid.cdn-apple.com/appleauth/static/jsapi/appleid/1/en_US/appleid.auth.js" > < / script >

< / body >

< / html >

You can also configure the authorization object using the JavaScript APIs and display a Sign In with Apple button, as in the following example:

< html >

< head >

< / head >

< body >

< script type = "text/javascript" src = "https://appleid.cdn-apple.com/appleauth/static/jsapi/appleid/1/en_US/appleid.auth.js" > < / script >

< div id = "appleid-signin" data - color = "black" data - border = "true" data - type = "sign in" > < / div >

< script type = "text/javascript" >

AppleID . auth . init ( {

clientId : '[CLIENT_ID]' ,

scope : '[SCOPES]' ,

redirectURI : '[REDIRECT_URI]' ,

state : '[STATE]'

} ) ;

< / script >

< / body >

< / html >

Your page would look something like this:



At this moment, there is a bug in the script. You can monkey patch it with some CSS trick, here is mine:

.signin-button > div > div > svg {

height : 50px ;

width : 100% ;

}

Now we have a proper sign-in button.

If you click on the button right now, you will get an invalid client error, which is not a surprise since our value in meta tag still be placeholder value.

To make this work, we need to provide four values. I will show you how to get those values (client id, scopes, redirect URL, and state).

Client ID & Redirect URL #

First, you need to have a client id to represent your application. Apple called this Services ID in the Apple developer portal.

Go to Identifiers menu in Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles Choose Services IDs

Define the name of the app that the user will see during the login flow, as well as define the identifier, which becomes the OAuth client_id . Check the Sign In with Apple checkbox.

Click the Configure button next to Sign in with Apple. This is where you define the domain your app is running and redirect URLs for OAuth flow.

The domain must not include a protocol (https://) and trailing slash (/), or it will throw Invalid domain error. It is not clear to me what might go wrong if we don't verify the domain. Apple Document states that "If the domain is not verified, the service will not function.", but it works fine in my test. Anyways I suggest you do it since it is an easy task.

We just created a Services ID ( client_id ) and a redirect URL that are required to initiate Sign in with Apple (Authentication Request step in OpenID Connect flow).

The scope is the amount of user information requested from Apple . Right now, there are only two options name and email . You can request the user’s name or email. You can also choose to request both or neither.

State is a parameter defined in OAuth protocol used to mitigate CSRF attacks . It can be any string; just make sure it is unique and non-guessable value.

For those who don't know how unique and random this state should be, I found an example from Google where they use SHA1 over a random string( openssl_random_pseudo_bytes ). Maybe you can start with that. One good choice for a state token is a string of 30 or so characters constructed using a high-quality random-number generator. Another is a hash generated by signing some of your session state variables with a key that is kept secret on your back-end. – Google Identity Platform More information: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OpenIDConnect?hl=fr#createxsrftoken

After you know how to get and generate those parameters, replace all the placeholders, and try signing in again. This time everything would work as it should be. You will be redirected to Apple.com and prompt with Sign in form.

Configuring Sign In with Apple Buttons #

Use CSS styles and data attributes to display and configure Sign In with Apple buttons in browsers.

Control the size of the button by adding a class that contains the desired CSS width and height styles.

.signin-button {

width : 210px ;

height : 40px ;

}

The above example is coming from the Apple documentation, but it does not work as expected at the moment. I hack around with the following instead.

.signin-button > div > div > svg {

height : 50px ;

width : 100% ;

}

You can change the text in the button by setting the data-type property to one of the following values:

sign in . (Default) For the Sign In with Apple button.

. (Default) For the Sign In with Apple button. continue . For the Continue with Apple button.

Background Color #

Specify the background color of the Sign In with Apple button by setting the data-color property to one of the following values:

black . (Default) Sets the background of the button to black.

. (Default) Sets the background of the button to black. white . Sets the background of the button to white.

Specify the border for the Sign In with Apple button by setting the data-border property to one of the following values:

false . (Default) The button doesn’t have a border.

. (Default) The button doesn’t have a border. true . Draws a border around the button.

Corner Radius #

Use CSS to control the corner radius like you normally do.

.signin-button {

border-radius : 10px ;

}

We are not finished yet, but let see how far we can go with the information we have now.

Click Sign in with Apple button now direct you to Apple.com and prompt users to sign in.

If this is your first time, you might see two-factor authentication dialog.

After pass two-factor authentication, you will see a prompt confirming that you want to sign in to this application using your Apple ID along with information that will be shared with the app.

You can edit that information by click on Edit buttons

Click Continue and you will be redirected back to your app, which will be failed since we didn't implement any logic to handle the redirect.

As you can see, we can go a bit far with the information we got. We redirected back to what we put in <meta name="appleid-signin-redirect-uri" content="[REDIRECT_URI]"> ( https://siwa-example.herokuapp.com/redirect ).

If you want to have a custom button, here is the URL generated from Apple JS. https : / / appleid . apple . com / auth / authorize ? client_id = [ CLIENT_ID ] & redirect_uri = [ REDIRECT_URL ] & response_type = code id_token & state = [ STATE ] & scope = [ SCOPES ] & response_mode = form_post Put this as href for <a> tag should do the trick. < a href = "https://appleid.apple.com/auth/authorize?client_id=[CLIENT_ID]&redirect_uri=[REDIRECT_URL]&response_type=code id_token&state=[STATE]&scope=[SCOPES]&response_mode=form_post" > Sign In with Apple < / a > You can have the full detail in Apple Documentation

Handle the Redirect #

This is where we handle Authentication Response . The default response_type for Authentication Request generated from Apple JS is code id_token , so we would get state , id_token , and code along with user in the response.

From my understanding user object is not a standard spec; this information should be in the id_token . There is some concern about this in Apple Developer Forums; this might be changed in the future; let's keep our eyes open. The user object would be returned only for the first time. This behavior is the same as iOS SDK mentioned in Sign in with Apple, Part 1: Apps and confirmed in Apple Developer Forums. To test the response with the user object, you need to remove Sign in with Apple permission from your app first (So it act like the first time). iPhone:

You can do that by removing the permission in Settings > Apple ID > Password & Security > Apple ID Logins/App Using Your Apple ID > Your app name > Stop using Apple ID Website:

You can also manage this on website by visit your Apple ID > click Manage Apps & websites using Apple ID under Security section > Your app name > Stop using Apple ID

The Apple default button is making a request with response_mode equal to form_post (which is required if you requested any scopes) which will make an HTTP POST to the client with Authorization Response parameters.

Here is a very simple Rails application to handle the POST response.

Payload:

{

"state" : "xxx" ,

"code" : "yyy" ,

"id_token" : "zzz" ,

"user" : {

"name" : {

"firstName" : "John" ,

"lastName" : "Doe"

} ,

"email" : "example@privaterelay.appleid.com"

}

}

Application code:



class HomeController < ApplicationController

skip_before_action :verify_authenticity_token , only : :redirect



def index

state = Digest : : SHA1 . hexdigest ( SecureRandom . random_bytes ( 1024 ) )

session [ :state ] = state

end



def redirect

@state = params [ :state ]

@code = params [ :code ]

@id_token = params [ :id_token ]

@user = parmas [ :user ]







render 'redirect'

end

end





Redirect Completed



< h1 > Code < / h1 >

< p > < %= @code %></p>



<h1>State(<%= session [ :state ] %>)</h1>

< p > < %= @state %></p>



<h1>ID TOKEN</h1>

<p><%= @id_token %></p>



< h1 > User < / h1 >

< p > < % = @user %></p>

Sign in again, but this time the redirect will be successful with four values code , state , user , and id_token .

Response Validation #

At this point, we got everything we need to create an account. You can get sub (Apple user's unique ID) and user information in user , but don't just blindly trust everything from a network. You need to validate these information before use .

State Validation #

We use state to mitigate Cross-Site Request Forgery . We verify the state parameter by matches the one we sent at the beginning with the one we get back from the response.

def redirect

@code = params [ :code ]



if @code . present ? && session [ :state ] == @state

session . delete ( :state )

. . .

end

. . .

end

Full detail spec can be found here

ID Token (id_token) Validation #

ID Token is a JSON Web Token (JWT) contain a set of user attributes, which are called claims.

Apple id_token contains following information:



{

"kid" : "AIDOPK1" ,

"alg" : "RS256"

}



{

"iss" : "https://appleid.apple.com" ,

"aud" : [ Services ID that we registered at the beginning ] ,

"exp" : 1579073561 ,

"iat" : 1579072961 ,

"sub" : [ Apple User Identifier ] ,

"c_hash" : "Q4ZkNP4SB2f-m9vtLfO0UA" ,

"email" : [ EMAIL ] ,

"email_verified" : "true" ,

"is_private_email" : "true" ,

"auth_time" : 1579072961

}

I already show you how to validate JWT in my previous article, Sign in with Apple, Part 3: Backend – Token verification. Following are the fields you should validate:

Key Description Note iss (issuer) The issuer registered claim key. Should come from Apple ( https://appleid.apple.com in this case) aud (audience) The audience registered claim key. Must matched a Services ID ( client_id ) that you created in Client ID & Redirect URL` exp (expiration) The expiration time registered claim key. The current time MUST be before the time represented by the exp Claim iat (issued at) The issued at registered claim key, the value of which indicates the time at which the token was generated. You can check elapsed time since this issued time if you need custom expiration duration.

I leave the implementation detail of how to extract JWT here since each language have their own library and a way of doing it

You must also validate the signature of the ID Token with Apple's public key. I already wrote a rough how-to in my previous post How to verify the token. You can check it out there.

Full detail spec can be found here

At this point, even this isn't a complete OpenID Connect flow , we got everything we need to create an account. If you don't use any library, this might be it. You get all the information needed from this hybrid flow, but if you use any third-party library which only implements Authorization Code Flow , they might ask for client_secret to complete the Token Request flow before you can have id_token . For completeness, I will show you how to retrieve client_secret and finish the Token Request flow .

Authorization Code (code) Validation #

Token Request flow exchange Authorization Code ( code ) with access_token and id_token . As we always do, we need to validate the Authorization code before doing the exchange.

To do that, we need to compare the code we get with c_hash (Code Hash) value in the id_token . You can't just compare it, as a name imply Code Hash is a hash value of code. To compare it, you need to know what Code Hash represented.

c_hash Code hash value. Its value is the base64url encoding of the left-most half of the hash of the octets of the ASCII representation of the code value, where the hash algorithm used is the hash algorithm used in the alg Header Parameter of the ID Token's JOSE Header. For instance, if the alg is HS512, hash the code value with SHA-512, then take the left-most 256 bits and base64url encode them. The c_hash value is a case sensitive string.

If the ID Token is issued from the Authorization Endpoint with a code, which is the case for the response_type values code id_token and code id_token token, this is REQUIRED; otherwise, its inclusion is OPTIONAL.

– https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-core-1_0.html#HybridIDToken

To sum it up, these are steps you need to do:

Hash the octets of the ASCII representation of the code with the SHA-256 algorithm. Take the left-most half of the hash and base64url encode it. Compare c_hash with the one you got in step 2.

Full detail spec can be found here

Here is an example in Ruby:

c_hash = "xxx"

code = "yyy"

hash_code = Digest : : SHA256 . digest code

base64url_encode = Base64 . urlsafe_encode64 ( hash_code [ 0 , hash_code . size / 2. to_i ] , padding : false )



if base64url_encode == c_hash



end

Exchange authorization code with an access token #

The final part of the flow is to exchange authorization code for an access token. The endpoint and parameters are documents in Apple Documentation

Endpoint:

POST https : / / appleid . apple . com / auth / token

Parameters:

Key Description Note client_id The application identifier for your com.sarunw.siwa.client in my case. client_secret A secret generated as a JSON Web Token that uses the secret key generated by the WWDR portal. I will tell you how to get it in the next section code The authorization code received from your application’s user agent. The code is single use only and valid for five minutes. The one that we got from Authorization Response grant_type The grant type that determines how the client interacts with the server. For authorization code validation, use authorization_code . For refresh token validation requests, use refresh_token . Use authorization_code redirect_uri The destination URI the code was originally sent to.

At this point, we can fill in every parameter but one, client_secret . Let's see how to get that.

Create a Sign in with Apple private key #

To get a client_secret , we need to create an Apple private key for Sign in with Apple service first.

Go to Identifiers menu in Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles Choose Key Click the blue plus icon to register a new key. Give your key a name, and check the Sign In with Apple checkbox.

Click the Configure button and select the primary App ID you created earlier.

Apple will generate a new private key for you and let you download it only once. Make sure you save this file because you won’t be able to get it back again later! The file you download will end in .p8. You also get key identifier ( kid ) (The key identifier appears below the key name.)



Creating the Client Secret #

Client secret is in JWT format with following header and payload:



{

"kid" : "[KEY_ID]" ,

"alg" : "ES256"

}



{

"iss" : "[TEAM_ID]" ,

"iat" : 1579087819 ,

"exp" : 1594639819 ,

"aud" : "https://appleid.apple.com" ,

"sub" : "[CLIENT_ID]"

}

Header

Key Description Note alg The algorithm used to sign the token. ES256 in this case. kid A 10-character key identifier obtained from your developer account. We already got this Step 5. in the previous steps.

Payload

Key Description Note iss The issuer registered claim key, which has the value of your 10-character Team ID, obtained from your developer account. Log in to your Apple Developer Account and click on Membership section on the left panel, you will see your Team ID there. iat The issued at registered claim key, the value of which indicates the time at which the token was generated, in terms of the number of seconds since Epoch, in UTC. exp The expiration time registered claim key, the value of which must not be greater than 15777000 (6 months in seconds) from the Current Unix Time on the server. aud The audience registered claim key, the value of which identifies the recipient the JWT is intended for. Since this token is meant for Apple, use https://appleid.apple.com . Use https://appleid.apple.com sub The subject registered claim key, the value of which identifies the principal that is the subject of the JWT. Use the same value as client_id as this token is meant for your application Use a Services ID that we created in Client ID & Redirect URL

Here comes another tricky part. After you have everything in place, you need to sign it with the private key generated from Create a Sign in with Apple private key.

From Apple Documentation

After creating the token, sign it using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) with the P-256 curve and the SHA-256 hash algorithm. Specify the value ES256 in the algorithm header key. Specify the key identifier in the kid attribute.

In my case, I use ruby-jwt

pem_content = < < ~ EOF

-- -- - BEGIN PRIVATE KEY -- -- -

xxxxx . . . . . .

-- -- - END PRIVATE KEY -- -- -

EOF



ecdsa_key = OpenSSL : : PKey : : EC . new pem_content



headers = {

'kid' = > 'key_id'

}



claims = {

'iss' = > 'team_id' ,

'iat' = > Time . now . to_i ,

'exp' = > Time . now . to_i + 86400 * 180 ,

'aud' = > 'https://appleid.apple.com' ,

'sub' = > 'client_id' ,

}



token = JWT . encode claims , ecdsa_key , 'ES256' , headers

This is the JWT client secret.

token = JWT . encode claims , ecdsa_key , 'ES256' , headers

This article should give you enough information for you to implement Sign in with Apple yourself (if you are a solo developer) or if you have a backed team, you should be able to find every value your colleagues would ask for.

I can't cover all the detail here (I provided a lot of references in Related Resources section and footnote for further reading), but I think I cover all the basics you should know to implement Sign in with Apple in your application.

If you have any feedback, comment, or any mistakes on this series, you can contact me via email or Twitter; I would love to hear from you.

Related Resources #

Feel free to follow me on Twitter and ask your questions related to this post. Thanks for reading and see you next time.

If you enjoy my writing, please check out my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/sarunw and become my supporter. Sharing the article is also greatly appreciated.

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