Authentication with the Service Chat SDK for iOS

The Service Chat SDK provides an authentication mechanism that allows your users to access user-specific information in Service Cloud. To authenticate, create an SCSAuthenticationSettings object and pass it to the SDK.

Authentication with the Service Chat SDK uses an SCSAuthenticationSettings object. Create this object with a client ID and a dictionary containing authentication settings. This authentication settings dictionary must contain a URL for your org (SCSOAuth2JSONKeyInstanceUrl) and an access token (SCSOAuth2JSONKeyAccessToken). If your OAuth2 flow supports refresh tokens, include a refresh token (SCSOAuth2JSONKeyRefreshToken) to the authentication settings.

In Swift:

In Objective-C:

If you’re using the Salesforce Mobile SDK, we provide a helper method that allows you to construct an SCSAuthenticationSettings object directly from the Mobile SDK user account. You can use this sample code after you’ve successfully logged in a user.

In Swift:

In Objective-C:

If you plan to use remote push notification to alert the user when an event occurs in your org, call registerForPushNotifications on the SCSAuthenticationSettings object. To learn more, see Notifications with the Service Chat SDK for iOS.

However you create an SCSAuthenticationSettings object, pass it to the Service Chat SDK during the authentication flow.

You can either authenticate on-demand when the SDK calls serviceCloud(shouldAuthenticateServiceType:completion:) in your SCServiceCloudDelegate implementation, or you can authenticate explicitly (that is, before the app attempts to show the relevant UI) using the setAuthenticationSettings(settings:forServiceType:completion:) method in the ServiceCloud shared instance.

With on-demand authentication, you perform the authentication asynchronously, after the SDK calls your serviceCloud(shouldAuthenticateServiceType:completion:) delegate method. Once authenticated, pass the SCSAuthenticationSettings object to the completion block that you’re given in the serviceCloud(shouldAuthenticateServiceType:completion:) method.

The following sequence diagram illustrates the basic authentication flow for on-demand authentication.

Alternatively, you can explicitly authenticate before any UI appears that requires authentication. Call the setAuthenticationSettings(settings:forServiceType:completion:) method in the ServiceCloud shared instance using the SCSAuthenticationSettings object.

The following sequence diagram illustrates the authentication flow for explicit authentication.

To programmatically log out a user, call setAuthenticationSettings(settings:forServiceType:completion:) using nil for the SCSAuthenticationSettings argument.

Implement serviceCloud(authenticationFailed:forServiceType:) in your SCServiceCloudDelegate object to handle error conditions. The SDK calls this method if the access token expires, and for any other scenario that results in an authentication failure. If you return true or YES, the SDK assumes that you want to proceed, and it subsequently calls serviceCloud(shouldAuthenticateServiceType:completion:) to give you a chance to send updated authentication information. If you return false or NO, the SDK goes back to the guest user state.

The error argument in this method contains information about the error. The code property on this object contains the error code. The following errors are the most common error codes you can encounter:

See Status Codes and Error Responses for a full set of possible error codes.

The following sample code illustrates how to implement an SCServiceCloudDelegate object to handle authentication.