Disabling User Accounts

Disabling User Accounts

It is possible to disable a user account so that the user is not able to access resources on the server. For example, a user who has violated your service agreement can be banned from accessing services provided by your Skygear Server.

When disabled, a user cannot log in to their account. Disabled user cannot request Skygear API as doing so will return an error instead.

You can disable or enable a user account by calling a Skygear API. You can create a mobile or web app so this functionality is available to admins.

User account can be disabled indefinitely or can be automatically enabled after a certain period. When disabling a user account, you can also set a message to be shown to the user so that the user knows why their account is disabled.

Disable a user

To disable a user, you need the User ID of the user to be disabled. You can disable a user by calling adminDisableUser:

var userID = "923b3d99-f21f-4e7c-a383-ffa319fe04c7";
skygear.auth.adminDisableUser(userID).then((userID) => {
  console.log("user is disabled");
}, (error) => {
  console.error(error);
})

Enable a disabled user account

You can enable a disabled user account by calling adminEnableUser:

var userID = "923b3d99-f21f-4e7c-a383-ffa319fe04c7";
skygear.auth.adminEnableUser(userID).then((userID) => {
  console.log("user is enabled");
}, (error) => {
  console.error(error);
})

Disable a user with a message and expiry period.

You can disable a user and attach a login message to the user account. The login message can be shown to the user when the user logs in.

You can also set an expiry period. After the expiry period, the user will be automatically enabled.

var userID = "923b3d99-f21f-4e7c-a383-ffa319fe04c7";
skygear.auth.adminDisableUser(
  userID,
   "Account disabled due to TOS violations.",
   new Date((new Date()).getTime() + 5*60000)
).then((userID) => {
  console.log("user is disabled");
}, (error) => {
  console.error(error);
})

Tell user that their account is disabled

When a user is disabled, server may return UserDisabled error. This will only happen if the server action requires an authenticated user. To reliably check if the user is disabled, call whoami.

To find out how to handle Skygear Error, check out Error Handling in SDK.

The toLocaleString() function of the returned error will explain to the user that their account is disabled. If you want to handle the error differently, you can get the disable message from error info dictionary.

skygear.auth.whoami().then((user) => {
    console.log(`Oh. I am ${user.username}.`);
}, (err) => {
    if (err.error.code === UserDisabled) {
        console(err.error.toLocaleString());
    }
    // Error handling...
});