firebase.auth.Auth.onIdTokenChanged should return accessToken

For applications requiring the accessToken from a provider to make further API requests to said provider (for example, making requests to various Google APIs), they can fetch the initial access token via getRedirectResult() or signInWithPopup(), since these both pass firebase.auth.UserCredential.

However, when an access token is periodically refreshed, there’s no means to get a corresponding firebase.auth.UserCredential.

It seems as though since onIdTokenChanged is triggered for token refreshes where as onAuthStateChanged is not, that onIdTokenChanged should pass a firebase.auth.UserCredential instead of firebase.User.

Is there any other means to listen for changes to the accessToken upon refresh?

[msukmanowsky]

Thanks @bojeil-google! Makes sense when you consider that design decision. I do think that it this feature request should be considered for firebase auth since I doubt that I’m the only one who wants to use a Google API with the access token granted.

That said, even if this doesn’t land in firebase anytime soon, I think what would be immensely helpful is a full example of how to use GAPI to auth and pass those credentials to firebase. I plan to write up an example on this soon and will post it to this thread for others to have a look at.

[bojeil-google]

The underlying Firebase Auth SDK does not manage OAuth credentials. After the sign-in operation, they discard your OAuth credentials, including the OAuth refresh tokens. The primary goal of Firebase Auth is AuthN and not AuthZ. onIdTokenChanged listener is used to detect Firebase Auth ID token changes and has nothing to do with the underlying authentication provider.

If you think Firebase Auth should manage OAuth tokens, please file a feature request via Firebase Support channels and explain why you think this is a critical functionality that Firebase Auth should support.

If getting a Google OAuth token is a requirement for your application, you should consider using the Google Sign in library for web which manages OAuth token refresh . Using that, you can sign in with Firebase Auth too but this is not compatible with FirebaseUI.