How to allow my user to reset their password on Cognito User Pools?

Question

So in my app I obviously want to provide the means for users to reset their passwords. The issue I'm having though is that the new documentation for User Pools is pretty ambiguous on this topic. Here is what they tell you to do for a Forgot Password flow, and the link you may find it at:

cognitoUser.forgotPassword({
        onSuccess: function (result) {
            console.log('call result: ' + result);
        },
        onFailure: function(err) {
            alert(err);
        },
        inputVerificationCode() {
            var verificationCode = prompt('Please input verification code ' ,'');
            var newPassword = prompt('Enter new password ' ,'');
            cognitoUser.confirmPassword(verificationCode, newPassword, this);
        }
    });

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cognito/latest/developerguide/using-amazon-cognito-user-identity-pools-javascript-examples.html

However when I drop this code into my project where a cognitoUser is defined and signed in, nothing seems to happen. I understand I need to somehow integrate this code with sending a verification code to the user, and asking them for a new password, but can't find anything on how to do this. Thoughts?

Thanks

Answer 1

Resetting the password with forgot password flow has two steps:

1. Start the process by requesting for a verification code from the service. A code will be delivered to the user's phone/email.
2. Set the new password using the delivered verification code.

Use these two functions to perform the above steps and reset the password:

1. cognitoUser.forgotPassword(): This will start the forgot password process flow. The service generates a verification code and sends it to the user. The "data", returned through callback.inputVerificationCode(data), indicates where the verification code was sent.

2. cognitoUser.confirmPassword(): Use the delivered verification code with this function to set a new password.

Answer 2

AWS' docs are terrible on this topic (Cognito). You basically need to setup cognitoUser, then call forgotPassword

export function resetPassword(username) {
    // const poolData = { UserPoolId: xxxx, ClientId: xxxx };
    // userPool is const userPool = new AWSCognito.CognitoUserPool(poolData);

    // setup cognitoUser first
    cognitoUser = new AWSCognito.CognitoUser({
        Username: username,
        Pool: userPool
    });

    // call forgotPassword on cognitoUser
    cognitoUser.forgotPassword({
        onSuccess: function(result) {
            console.log('call result: ' + result);
        },
        onFailure: function(err) {
            alert(err);
        },
        inputVerificationCode() { // this is optional, and likely won't be implemented as in AWS's example (i.e, prompt to get info)
            var verificationCode = prompt('Please input verification code ', '');
            var newPassword = prompt('Enter new password ', '');
            cognitoUser.confirmPassword(verificationCode, newPassword, this);
        }
    });
}

// confirmPassword can be separately built out as follows...  
export function confirmPassword(username, verificationCode, newPassword) {
    cognitoUser = new AWSCognito.CognitoUser({
        Username: username,
        Pool: userPool
    });

    return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
        cognitoUser.confirmPassword(verificationCode, newPassword, {
            onFailure(err) {
                reject(err);
            },
            onSuccess() {
                resolve();
            },
        });
    });
}

Answer 3

I had this same issue. Was able to work through it by using confirmPassword() in the following way.

//validation of input from form
req.checkBody('email', 'Username is required').notEmpty();
req.checkBody('password', 'Password is required').notEmpty();
req.checkBody('confirmationcode', 'Confirmation Code is required').notEmpty();


var confirmationCode = req.body.confirmationcode;
var password = req.body.password;
var userPool = new AmazonCognitoIdentity.CognitoUserPool(poolData);


var userData = {
    Username: req.body.email,
    Pool: userPool
};
var cognitoUser = new AmazonCognitoIdentity.CognitoUser(userData);

cognitoUser.confirmPassword(confirmationCode, password, {
    onFailure(err) {
        console.log(err);
    },
    onSuccess() {
        console.log("Success");
    },
});