Additional Features

PowerAuth SDK for iOS contains multiple additional features that are useful for mobile apps.

Obtaining User’s Claims

If supported by the server, the PowerAuth mobile SDK can provide additional information asserted about a person associated with an activation. This information can be obtained either during the activation process or at a later time.

Here is an example of how to process user information during activation:

powerAuthSDK.createActivation(activation) { (result, error) in
    if let result {
        if let userInfo = result.userInfo {
            // User information received.
            // At this moment, the object is also available at
            // powerAuthSDK.lastFetchedUserInfo
        }
    } else {
        // Error handling
    }
}

To fetch the user information at a later time, use the following code:

if let userInfo = powerAuthSDK.lastFetchedUserInfo {
    // User information is already available
} else {
    sdk.fetchUserInfo { userInfo, error in
        if let userInfo {
            // User information received
        } else {
            // Error handling
        }
    }
}

The obtained PowerAuthUserInfo object contains the following properties:

If the address is provided, then PowerAuthUserAddress contains the following properties:

Notes:

1. Value is false also when the claim is not present in the allClaims dictionary
2. Phone number is typically in E.164 format, for example +1 (425) 555-1212 or +56 (2) 687 2400
3. This is typically an ISO 639-1 Alpha-2 language code in lowercase and an ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 country code in uppercase, separated by a dash. For example, en-US or fr-CA

Debug Build Detection

It is sometimes useful to switch PowerAuth SDK to a DEBUG build configuration to get more logs from the library:

• CocoaPods: A majority of the SDK is distributed as source codes, so it will match your application’s build configuration. Only low-level C++ codes and several wrapper classes on top of those are precompiled into a static library.
• Manual installation: Xcode matches build configuration across all nested projects, so you usually don’t need to care about the configuration switching.

The DEBUG build is usually helpful during application development, but on the other hand, it’s highly unwanted in production applications. For this purpose, the PowerAuthSystem.isInDebug() method provides information on whether the PowerAuth library was compiled in DEBUG configuration. It is a good practice to check this flag and crash the process when the production application is linked against the DEBUG PowerAuth:

#if YOUR_APPSTORE_BUILD_FLAG
    // Final vs Debug library trap
    if PowerAuthSystem.isInDebug() {
        fatalError("CRITICAL ERROR: You're using Debug PowerAuth library in production build.")
    }
#endif

Request Interceptors

The PowerAuthClientConfiguration can contain multiple request interceptor objects, allowing you to adjust all HTTP requests created by the SDK before their execution. Currently, you can use the following two classes:

• PowerAuthBasicHttpAuthenticationRequestInterceptor to add a basic HTTP authentication header to all requests
• PowerAuthCustomHeaderRequestInterceptor to add a custom HTTP header to all requests

For example:

let basicAuth = PowerAuthBasicHttpAuthenticationRequestInterceptor(username: "gateway-user", password: "gateway-password")
let customHeader = PowerAuthCustomHeaderRequestInterceptor(headerKey: "X-CustomHeader", value: "123456")
let clientConfig = PowerAuthClientConfiguration()
clientConfig.requestInterceptors = [ basicAuth, customHeader ]

We don’t recommend implementing the PowerAuthHttpRequestInterceptor protocol on your own. The interface allows you to tweak the requests created in the PowerAuthSDK but also gives you an opportunity to break things. So, rather than create your own interceptor, contact us and describe what use case is missing. Also, keep in mind that the interface may change in the future. We can guarantee the API stability of public classes implementing this interface, but not the stability of the interface itself.

Custom User-Agent

The PowerAuthClientConfiguration contains the userAgent property that allows you to set a custom value for the “User-Agent” HTTP request header for all requests initiated by the library:

let clientConfig = PowerAuthClientConfiguration()
clientConfig.userAgent = "MyClient/1.0.0"

The default value of the property is composed as “APP-EXECUTABLE/APP-VERSION PowerAuth2/PA-VERSION (OS/OS-VERSION, DEVICE-INFO)”, for example: “MyApp/1.0 PowerAuth2/1.7.0 (iOS 15.2, iPhone12.1)”. The information about the application executable and version is obtained from the main bundle and its Info.plist.

If you set nil to the userAgent property, then the default “User-Agent” provided by the operating system will be used.

Read Next

• Troubleshooting