Skip to main content
You can add login to your regular web application using the Authorization Code Flow. To learn how the flow works and why you should use it, read Authorization Code Flow. To call your API from a regular web app, read Call Your API Using the Authorization Code Flow. To implement the Authorization Code Flow, Auth0 provides the following resources: Following a successful login, your application will have access to the user’s and . The ID token contains basic user profile information, and the access token can be used to call the Auth0 /userinfo endpoint or your own protected APIs. To learn more about ID tokens, read ID Tokens. To learn more about access tokens, read Access Tokens. You will request the user’s authorization and redirect back to your app with an authorization_code. Then you will exchange the code for tokens.

​
Prerequisites

Register your app with Auth0. To learn more, read Register Regular Web Applications.
  • Select Regular Web App as the Application Type.
  • Add an Allowed Callback URL of {https://yourApp/callback}.
  • Make sure your application’s Grant Types include Authorization Code. To learn more, read Update Grant Types.

​
Authorize user

To begin the flow, you’ll need to get the user’s authorization. This step may include one or more of the following processes:
  • Authenticating the user;
  • Redirecting the user to an to handle authentication;
  • Obtaining user consent for the requested permission level, unless consent has been previously given.
To authorize the user, your app must send the user to the authorization URL.

​
Authorization URL example

​
Parameters

As an example, your HTML snippet for your authorization URL when adding login to your app might look like:

​
Response

If all goes well, you’ll receive an HTTP 302 response. The authorization code is included at the end of the URL:

​
Request tokens

Now that you have an Authorization Code, you must exchange it for tokens. Using the extracted Authorization Code (code) from the previous step, you will need to POST to the token URL.

​
POST to token URL example

​
Parameters

​
Response

If all goes well, you’ll receive an HTTP 200 response with a payload containing access_token, refresh_token, id_token, and token_type values:
Validate your tokens before saving them. To learn how, read Validate ID Tokens and Validate Access Tokens.
ID tokens contain user information that must be decoded and extracted. Access tokens are used to call the Auth0 Authentication API’s /userinfo endpoint or another API. If you are calling your own API, the first thing your API will need to do is verify the Access token. Refresh tokens are used to obtain a new access token or ID token after the previous one has expired. The refresh_token will only be present in the response if you included the offline_access scope and enabled Allow Offline Access for your API in the Dashboard.
Refresh tokens must be stored securely since they allow a user to remain authenticated essentially forever.

​
Use cases

​
Basic authentication request

This example shows the most basic request you can make when authorizing the user in step 1. It displays the Auth0 login screen and allows the user to sign in with any of your configured connections: Now, when you request tokens, your ID Token will contain the most basic claims. When you decode the ID Token, it will look similar to:

​
Request user’s name and profile picture

In addition to the usual user authentication, this example shows how to request additional user details, such as name and picture. To request the user’s name and picture, you need to add the appropriate scopes when authorizing the user: Now, when you request tokens, your ID token will contain the requested name and picture claims. When you decode the ID token, it will look similar to:

​
Request user log in with GitHub

In addition to the usual user authentication, this example shows how to send users directly to a social identity provider, such as GitHub. You will first need to configure the appropriate connection in Auth0 Dashboard > Authentication > Social and get the connection name from the Settings tab. To send users directly to the GitHub login screen, you need to pass the connection parameter and set its value to the connection name (in this case, github) when authorizing the user in step 1: Now, when you request tokens, your ID Token will contain a sub claim with the user’s unique ID returned from GitHub. When you decode the ID token, it will look similar to:

​
Learn more