How to verify custom auth claim upon login? - firebase

Question

Similar to Uber, I have two applications, one for clients and one for drivers. Is it possible to know which role type the user has upon login? For instance, if I have a client account and I try to log in on the driver's application I should get the error: "client accounts cannot be used to log into the driver application".
Let's say I stored the user's account type (driver or client) in a custom auth claim, would it be possible to access that while firebase auth is verifying the email and password, or does the user have to log in successfully before I can verify the value of the custom auth claim?
Essentially, if the user tries logging into the wrong application, I want it to come back as an error without actually logging them in. So far I've only been able to check for this after the user logs in using getIDTokenResult.
Any help is appreciated! :)

Answer 1

Essentially, if the user tries logging into the wrong application, I want it to come back as an error without actually logging them in.
You seem to be mixing authentication (the user enters credentials that prove who they are) with authorization (the user is allowed to do certain things based on who the are). Firebase Authentication solely is concerned with the former: allowing the user to sign in once they enter the correct credentials for their account. Once the user is signed in, your application code can then determine whether they're allowed to perform certain actions.
For your specific use-case for example, the idiomatic approach is to:
Sign the user in to Firebase Authentication.
Check whether their token contains the necessary claim for the app they're trying to use.
If so, allow them to continue to the main screen of your app.
If not, inform them of that fact and don't allow them to continue.
As you can see here, it is your application logic that handles all authorization logic, while Firebase takes care of the authentication.

Answer 2

The user must be logged in before checking the claims and anyways you cannot prevent anyone from logging in if it's a same firebase project. You should check the claim after login and if the user has logged into wrong application, just force them to logout. Security Rules can be used to prevent unauthorized access.
firebase.auth().signInWithEmailAndPassword().then(async ({user}) => {
const claims = await user.getIdTokenResult()
// check for claim
// if not valid then logout or redirect to relevant pages
await firebase.auth(can ).signOut()
})
You can show your error alerts after signing out.
If you really want to check the claim before logging the user in then you would have to use cloud functions which checks claims for the entered email but this method may not be useful in other sign in providers such as Google or Facebook.
Although I won't recommend using Cloud functions just to check the claims before users logs in as it just can be bypassed on the frontend and as mentioned above, forcing the user to logout should be enough. But here's a cloud function you can use to check the claims.
exports.checkClaim = functions.https.onCall((data, context) => {
const {email} = data;
return admin
.auth()
.getUser(uid)
.then((userRecord) => {
const {customClaims: {driver, client}} = userRecord;
if (driver) return {role: "driver"}
if (client) return {role: "client"}
return {error: "No role found"}
})
.catch((error) => {
console.log('Error fetching user data:', error);
});
});
Then call the function before you run the signInWithEmailAndPassword method.
const checkUserRole = firebase.functions().httpsCallable('checkClaim');
checkUserRole({ email: "user#domain.tld" })
.then((result) => {
const {role, error} = result;
if (error) {
alert("Something went wrong. No roles found")
} else {
console.log(`Your role is: ${role}`)
}
});
Again as mentioned above this sounds a bit overkill but if it's necessary or you prefer to do it that way then you use this function.