Skip To Content ArcGIS for Developers Sign In Dashboard

This workflow is ideal for serverless web applications and applications that run entirely in a browser using the OAuth 2.0 implicit grant.

Note: If you are using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript you can skip to learning how this work-flow is implemented in the ArcGIS API for JavaScript as part of IdentityManager.

Browser-Based Application User Authentication

  1. Direct your users to the authorization endpoint in a browser with your client_id, response_type=token, a redirect_uri and optional expiration.
  2. If the user successfully presents their username and password they will be redirected back to your application at the redirect_uri from step 1. The access_token and additional information will be added to the end of the URL as a hash Your application can parse the URL for the user's token.
  3. Now that you have the access token, include it in requests to ArcGIS Online which require a token.

Configuring a redirect URI

  1. Go to the "Authentication" tab for your application on ArcGIS for Developers.

    Application Overview
  2. Add a new redirect URI to the list at the bottom of the page. These redirect URIs represent the valid places that a user can be redirected to after a successful sign in.

    Application Overview

Note: You can also configure a redirect URI on ArcGIS Online or in your own on-premise portal

You cannot use redirect URIs that begin with file://. For browser based applications you should always use redirect URIs starting with https://. URIs starting with http:// can be used in development where no SSH is available.

Send the user to the authorization URL

ArcGIS Online:
On-premise ArcGIS Portal: https://<host>:<port>/<subdirectory>/sharing/rest/oauth2/authorize

A sample authorization URL for ArcGIS Online might look like this.

You could also construct an <a> tag like so

<a href="">Sign In With ArcGIS Online</a>

Or open the authorization page in a popup window.

var signInButton = document.getElementById('sign-in');

// do this on a button click to avoid popup blockers
document.addEventListener('click', function(){''+clientId+'&response_type=token&expiration=20160&redirect_uri=' + window.encodeURIComponent(redirectUri), 'oauth-window', 'height=400,width=600,menubar=no,location=yes,resizable=yes,scrollbars=yes,status=yes')

This URL contains the following pieces of information:

Once your send the user to the authorization screen they will sign in with their username and password. This is what a sample authorization screen will look like:

Authorization Screen

Once a user has authorized your application they will be redirect to the redirect_url that you specified when you directed the user to the authorization screen.

Parse the token from the URL

After the user signs in, they will be redirected to a page on your web application. Usually this page will be something like The user's access token will be a part of the URL:

Your page will need to parse out the access_token out of window.location.hash and either pass it to the parent page (if opened in a pop-up) or direct the user to another page after setting the token in a cookie or other persisted storage.

Here is an example of parsing the access token when the window was opened as a pop-up:

<!DOCTYPE html>
      // try to match an access token in window.location.hash
      var match = (window.location.hash) ? window.location.hash.match(/#access_token=([^&]+)/) : false;

      // if we found an access token in the URL pass the token up to a global function in
      if(match[1]) {
        var parentWindow = (window.opener && window.opener.parent) ? window.opener.parent : window

You can also use a regular expression to extract the user's username from window.location.hash. User names are guaranteed to be unique across the entire platform.

Token expiration

Tokens obtained through this workflow will always expire and cannot be refreshed. If a token expires, you have to sign the user in again.

If you need the ability to have longer sessions or refresh a user's token, you should use the server-based workflow.

Using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript

The ArcGIS API for JavaScript implements the above workflow as a part of the IdentityManager class. If you are using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript you should refer to these examples that implement named user login:

Using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript IdentityManager will automatically manage the user's credentials including storing and persisting them across browsing sessions and automatically adding them to requests when necessary.

More Samples

More examples of implementing named user login can be found for these APIs: