This tutorial is going to take a look at one of the most important features of a mobile application — the authentication. You know the scenario. You need to store some amount of user information (credentials) for them to get back and re-use the application rather than creating a new account.
Please make sure to have an AWS account before you begin this tutorial. If you don’t, please sign up for one.
What is AWS Amplify?
Amazon Web Service is a technology that provides cloud services. Since its launch in 2017, Amplify has come a long way in terms of providing a set of services in the form of the toolchain. It is also open source.
To build authentication into a React Native and Expo application with Amplify you first need to install the AWS Amplify CLI. Open a terminal window and execute the command below to install the CLI. We are going to install it as a global module.
npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli
Using Amplify’s CLI tool you are going to find several really helpful CLI plugins and services that you can enable with one click when integrating with a framework like React Native. Services such as GraphQL and REST APIs, authentication UI as well as backend support, storage, hosting, and many more are made available by Amplify’s CLI.
Getting Started with React Native and AWS Amplify
Start by creating a new application project. We are going to Expo CLI to generate the project. Open a terminal window and create a new React Native app.
npx expo-cli init expo-amplify-example
This command creates a new directory called expo-amplify-example. You can name it whatever you want. Inside this directory, you are going to find a complete React Native + Expo SDK project generated. Please note that, on running the above command, you’ll be asked by the CLI which template to use. This tutorial uses a blank template from the managed workflow. If you are familiar with any other template, feel free to choose that.
Expo CLI is a command-line utility to create React Native apps with no build configuration. The reason we’re relying on it is that, first, it’s an awesome tool for such use cases.
#aws-amplify #javascript #react-native #aws #react
