Getting the current user name in a Custom Application API

[richardtappenden]

Hi

We currently have a Custom Application that uses our own API. We use the @commercetools-backend/express middleware to validate the token on the request.

We have a requirement where by we'd like access to the user name of the logged in user. I can't currently see anyway of doing that - other than I can see the userId on the session property after the middleware has run.

Is there a way to either get the username directly via something in the context, or an endpoint I can query with that user id to find the current user name within my API?

Thanks

Richard

[Rhotimee]

Hi @richardtappenden, yes, you can query for the current logged-in user.
This uses the user's token to fetch the user information.

See the snippet below.

query MyQuery {
  me {
    firstName
    email
    id
  }
}

[Rhotimee]

Hey @richardtappenden, you actually can't use the snippet I sent above to get the user information because the token won't work in this case.

On your backend, you currently can't resolve the user information on your own.

Could you give more information about your use case?

[richardtappenden]

Sure - we use an MC Custom Application to author some additional data that is associated to a CT product but stored elsewhere. We want to store audit type information along with this data, so we need to know which user is currently doing modifications.

[Rhotimee]

@richardtappenden, we will be considering your use case as a feature. However, a workaround to make this possible is to pass the user information from your custom application as a custom header when making a request to your API.
You can get the user information on your custom application by extracting it from the application context.
Let me know if this helps.

[Rhotimee]

For more information, you can look at these sections of the docs.
Custom headers: https://docs.commercetools.com/custom-applications/concepts/integrate-with-your-own-api#custom-http-headers
Application context: https://docs.commercetools.com/custom-applications/api-reference/commercetools-frontend-application-shell-connectors#application-context

[richardtappenden]

Thank you @Rhotimee