This Post Was Supposed to Be About AWS Cognito

Some notes from setting up AWS Cognito for authentication on a new SPA, but turns into notes about AWS Amplify.

Some notes on setting up AWS Cogntio User Pools:

I have been using the AWS SDK for Javascript using Node as much as possible, instead of using the dashboard, in order to help keep steps reproducible.

  1. Note that the aws-sdk library will default to use the [default] credentials configured in ~/.aws/credentials, and may fail silently to override them.

  2. Note that it appears that Identity Pools created from the SDK will not appear on the dashboard until you have added a user. Alternatively, this may just be an artifact of eventual consistency on the API.

If you’re looking for the above, you should try Amplify

If you are interested in using AWS Cognito, I suggest you additionally look at AWS Amplify, which helps get you started with Cognito + several other AWS product in one neat package.

Note, however, that if you use the AWS Amplify CLI,

  1. The default Cognito User Pool that is created will have a phone number and 2fa on
  2. You cannot change the above setting.

As such, I suggest not creating a Cognito User Pool through the Amplify CLI; it makes local development far more painful than necessary.

Instead, create the Cognito User Pool through the dashboard or using a script.

If you are using Amplify, I’ve started to create a quickstart development environment, though note that it does not have a local stub of AWS Cognito User Pools.


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