Integrating Google Sign-In with React: A Dev-Friendly Guide

Problem

Imagine a world where users have to remember a password for every single website they visit.

Oh wait, that's this world!

Let's fix that for your app by integrating Google Sign-In, so users can log in with their Big G credentials without breaking a sweat.

Solution

Integrating Google Sign-In into your React app is easier than debugging a typo in useEffect.

Seriously, it just takes two steps to welcome the Big G into your project. Let’s dive in!

---

Step 1: Registering Your App with Google

Before the magic happens, you need to tell Google about your app. Here’s how:

1. Go to the Google Cloud Console: https://console.cloud.google.com/.

2. Navigate to API & Services: Once inside, click on API & Services from the dashboard.
   

3. Credentials Sidebar: On the left-hand side, click on Credentials.

1. Create Credentials: In the top navbar, tap on Create Credentials and choose OAuth Client ID.

1. Configure OAuth Client:
   • Select Web Application as the Application Type.
   • Under Authorized JavaScript origins, add:
     • Your local server URL (e.g., http://localhost:3000).
     • The domain where you plan to deploy the app (e.g., https://yourdomain.com/signup).

1. Click Create: Google will now generate your Client ID and Secret.

2. Copy Client ID and Secret: Save these somewhere secure (but not in plain text, because we’re better than that).

Congratulations! Major setup is complete. Now it’s time to get our hands dirty with some code.

---

Step 2: Coding the Integration

We’ll be using the [@react-oauth/google](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@react-oauth/google) package. Why reinvent the wheel when someone’s already got it rolling?

1. Install the Package:

   npm install @react-oauth/google

1. Write the Code: Here’s a simple example to get you started:

   // App.jsx
   import { useState } from "react";
   import { GoogleOAuthProvider, GoogleLogin } from "@react-oauth/google";

   function Homepage() {
     const [authData, setAuthData] = useState(null);

     const gContainer = {
       display: 'flex',
       flexDirection: 'column',
       alignItems: 'center',
       marginTop: '50px'
     };

     return (
       <googleoauthprovider clientid='{"YOUR_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID_HERE"}'>
         <div>



<ol>
<li>
<strong>Run Your App</strong>:
Fire up your app with npm start or yarn start, and you’re good to go!</li>
</ol>

<p>Now users can log in, and you’ll have access to their Google access token to authenticate them on your backend (or to marvel at in your console logs).</p>

<h2>
  
  
  <img src="/static/imghwm/default1.png" data-src="https://img.php.cn/upload/article/000/000/000/173565247884217.jpg?x-oss-process=image/resize,p_40" class="lazy" alt="Integrating Google Sign-In with React: A Dev-Friendly Guide">
</h2>

<h2>
  
  
  What Just Happened?
</h2>

<p>You’ve successfully added Google Sign-In to your React app by following these steps. When users log in, you’ll receive their access token. </p>

<p><img src="/static/imghwm/default1.png" data-src="https://img.php.cn/upload/article/000/000/000/173565247990959.jpg?x-oss-process=image/resize,p_40" class="lazy" alt="Integrating Google Sign-In with React: A Dev-Friendly Guide"></p>

<p>You can call an API endpoint using this token to fetch user-related information. For example:<br>
</p>

<pre class="brush:php;toolbar:false">const userInfoEndpoint = `https://oauth2.googleapis.com/tokeninfo?id_token=${accessToken}`;

This request will return the user’s profile data.

It’s recommended to handle this on the backend to prevent misuse of your API for fake logins.

For a quick test, I’ll use LiveAPI to send a request to this endpoint and confirm if I can retrieve the user info from the token we obtained earlier.

And that’s it! You now have all the data you need from OAuth like profile picture, name, and email.

---

TL;DR

1. Register your app with Google Cloud Console to get a Client ID.
2. Use @react-oauth/google to integrate Google Sign-In in your React app.
3. Call the Google API endpoint to fetch user information securely from your backend.

Let me take one more minute of your time.

I’m working on a super-convenient doc-generation tool called LiveAPI.

LiveAPI takes your repository as input and outputs beautiful, secure API documentation for all the APIs you have.

Bonus points: It lets you execute APIs directly from the documentation and generate request snippets in any language.

Happy coding, and may the Big G be ever in your favor and LiveAPI save you some time!