Possible to Login a User? What does a webflow app actually do?

App Developers
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I am trying to create my own Google login. I do not want to use memberstack or a third party app. I would like to build my own system. I just do not understand the logic behind it.

  1. Is there a way once Google authenticates, to create a new user in the CMS
  2. Is there a way once Google login event happens, the user is logged in like a normal user who uses their username and password? I do not see anything in the API to create a login event for the user.

I want a Google login to exactly do what a normal user login does.

Or is this not possible? Like how does Memberstack do it? Do they do it via their own database?

Another question, do Webflow apps only work with the webflow user building the website? Or does the webflow app work in the background when users visit your website. For example, I want an app to check what the user is typing in the search bar and automatically generate content below to show preliminary results.

I am just trying to wrap my head around the logic of Webflow apps.

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Apps currently fall into two categories;

  1. Apps which augment the designer experience by adding design-time functionality
  2. Apps which are externally hosted systems that are granted some API access to a site. These can respond to Webflow webhooks, and make Webflow API calls.

In general, Apps by themselves don’t augment your published site in visible ways- e.g. a stock market app with live feeds, or a video chat application, etc. You can build some of that using client-side JS and your own hosted servers.

Webflow currently does not have any means to host server-side code or to do server-side logic, SSR, custom auth, custom content gating, etc.

You could add these capabilities by building a reverse proxy, but there are some complexities there as well.

Since there is no server-side code support on the hosted site, you can need to consider that regarding your auth questions.

Client-side-only auth is probably possible, but it’s highly insecure, easily hacked, and Google restricts the access scopes ( IIRC name, email, profile photo ). Without a server-side, you can’t validate tokens.

This is why people use solutions like Memberstack, Auth0, Firebase Auth, or build reverse proxies when they have the dev wattage to support that build / maintain effort.

All of your other questions about Google auth specifically aren’t Webflow related; it’s the same as adding auth to a static hosted HTML page. You might find some good Google forums for that, or find some good Stack Overflow tips.

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