AWS Cognito getCurrentUser() after authentication with no refresh - amazon-web-services

Question

I'm trying to update a user's attribute right after authentication.
Auth works fine and I'm able to retrieve user attributes with it.
But the problem is var cognitoUser = getUserPool().getCurrentUser(); returns null. How do I retrieve the current user so that I am able to update the attribute but without refreshing the browser?
Perhaps another question would be, how do I use the accessToken to run functions on the current user without refreshing the browser?
var cognitoUser = getUserPool().getCurrentUser();
if (cognitoUser != null) {
cognitoUser.getSession(function(err, session) {
if ( err ) {
console.log(err);
return;
}else if( session.isValid() ){
updateUserAttribute( cognitoUser, 'custom:attr', attr )
}
});
}else{
console.log('Cognito User is null');
return;
}

Answer 1

getUserPool().getCurrentUser() looks for the user on the local storage, if it returns null is because the local storage do not have an user already set.
To setup the user on the local storage I use an instance of CognitoAuth that makes the job.
This solution is using Cognito Hosted UI.
On the callback url that is returned by Cognito UI:
Then, if you call getUserPool().getCurrentUser() this will not be null.
import { CognitoAuth } from "amazon-cognito-auth-js"
const authData = {
UserPoolId: "us-east-1_xxxxxx",
ClientId: "xxxxxxx",
RedirectUriSignIn: "https://examole.com/login",
RedirectUriSignOut: "https://example.com/logout",
AppWebDomain: "example.com",
TokenScopesArray: ["email"]
}
const auth = new CognitoAuth(authData)
auth.userhandler = {
onSuccess: function(result) {
//you can do something here
},
onFailure: function(err) {
// do somethig if fail
}
}
//get the current URL with the Hash that contain Cognito Tokens tokens
const curUrl = window.location.href
//This parse the hash and set the user on the local storage.
auth.parseCognitoWebResponse(curUrl)
Then, if you call getUserPool().getCurrentUser() this will not be null.

Answer 2

var cognitoUser = getUserPool().getCurrentUser();
That should return the last authenticated user, if the user pool is initialized correctly. Upon a successful authentication, we save the user keyed on the client id to local storage. Whenever you call getCurrentUser, it will retrieve that particular last authenticated user from local storage. The tokens are keyed on that user and client id. They are also saved to local storage after a successful authentication. Accessing the access token should be just:
cognitoUser.getSignInUserSession().getAccessToken().getJwtToken())
and you can use the token directly with the operations exposed in the CognitoIdentityServiceProvider client.

Answer 3

This is a fairly old question, so you may have moved on by now, but I think you need to create the user pool, using your userpoolId and clientID. I don't think you can just call getUserPool() without those being known and/or somehow available in memory. For example:
function makeUserPool () {
var poolData = {
UserPoolId : "your user pool id here",
ClientId : "you client id here"
};
return new AWSCognito.CognitoIdentityServiceProvider.CognitoUserPool(poolData);
}
var userPool = makeUserPool();
var currAWSUser = userPool.getCurrentUser();