Get started with React and Client Session Tokens

Learn to use Seam Components with your React application

Overview

Seam provides React components and hooks to connect and control many types of smart devices. This guide provides a rapid introduction to using React components with Client Sessions.

For this guide, we expect you to have a backend server and a client frontend react application. If you want to integrate Seam using only a client without a backend, you'll need to use a Publishable Key.

What is a Client Session Token?

A Client Session Token allows a device owner to make API requests to Seam where interactions are restricted only to the devices they own. To enable your users to interact with their devices, you'll need to create a client session and pass its token to the <SeamProvider />.

1 — Install the Seam SDK on your Server

Seam provides client libraries for many languages such as Javascript, Python, Ruby, and PHP, as well as a Postman collection and OpenAPI spec.

• Javascript: npm i seamapi (npm, github)

• Python: pip install seamapi (pip, github)

• Ruby: bundle add seamapi (rubygem, github)

• PHP: composer require seamapi/seam (packagist, github)

Once installed, sign-up for Seam to get your API key, and export it as an environment variable:

$ export SEAM_API_KEY=seam_test2ZTo_0mEYQW2TvNDCxG5Atpj85Ffw

This guide uses a Sandbox Workspace. Only virtual devices can be connected. If you need to connect a real August Lock, use a non-sandbox workspace and API key.

2 - Install @seamapi/react in your React application

npm install --save @seamapi/react
# or via yarn
yarn add @seamapi/react

3 — Create a Seam Client Session on your Server, and pass it to the Client

We'll start by writing some server code that returns a client session. There are a lot of ways to do this depending on your server framework:

• Create an endpoint such as /api/seam/get_client_session and call it from your frontend app

• Inject the client session token in your html if you're using an HTML templating engine.

For this guide, we'll assume you're creating an endpoint that will return a client session token. This is often appropriate for Single Page Applications.

Javascript/NextJS API

import { Seam } from "seamapi"

export default (req, res) => {
  // Do authentication logic
  const userId = req.auth.userId

  // Pull any accounts associated with this user
  // You can also use connect webview ids, or just pass an empty array if you'd
  // like the user to make the connect webviews themselves in the frontend!
  const accountsAssociatedWithUser = [{ seamConnectedAccountId: "..." }]

  const seam = new Seam()

  const clientSession = seam.client_sessions.create({
    connected_account_ids: accountsAssociatedWithUser.map(
      (acc) => acc.seamConnectedAccountId
    ),
  })

  res.status(200).json({
    token: clientSession.token,
  })
}

Laravel/PHP API

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers\Api;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class SeamController extends Controller
{
    public function getSeamClientSession()
    {
        // Assuming you have some data to return
        $data = [
            'seamClientSession' => $seam->client_sessions->create(
              // pull any connected accounts the current user has access to
              connected_account_ids: ["..."]
            )
        ];

        return response()->json($data);
    }
}

// routes/api.php
// ...
Route::get('/seam/get_seam_client_session', 'Api\SeamController@getSeamClientSession');
// ...

Awesome! We can now request this from the frontend client application using a hook like this:

// lib/hooks/use-seam-client-session-token.js
import { useState, useEffect } from "react"

export const useSeamClientSessionToken = () => {
  const { myAppAuthToken } = useAuth() // or however you manage client side auth
  const [token, setToken] = useState()

  useEffect(async () => {
    const res = await fetch("/api/seam/get_client_session", {
      method: "POST",
      headers: {
        Authorization: `Bearer ${myAppAuthToken}`,
      },
    })
    if (res.ok) {
      const data = await res.json()
      setToken(res.token)
    }
  }, [myAppAuthToken])

  return token
}

Why do we need the backend for getting the Client Session Token? It allows you to use your application's existing authentication! If you want to have Seam handle all the user authentication, you can use a publishable key, but we recommend using client session tokens!

4 - Use Your Client Session Token to Display a User's Devices

import { SeamProvider, DeviceTable } from "@seamapi/react"
import { useSeamClientSessionToken } from "lib/hooks/use-seam-client-session-token"

export const App = () => {
  const clientSessionToken = useSeamClientSessionToken()
  if (clientSessionToken == null) return <p>Loading...</p>
  return (
    <SeamProvider clientSessionToken={clientSessionToken}>
      <DeviceTable />
    </SeamProvider>
  )
}

You should see a list of devices like what's shown below:

Device Table React Component

Next Steps

• View and play with components in the interactive storybook component library

• Check out some Full Example Apps

If you have any questions or want to report an issue, email us at [email protected].