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Initialize the Passkey Client

Begin by initializing the Turnkey SDK by passing in a config object containing:
  • rpId: The Relying Party Identifier, which is the effective domain of your application.
  • apiBaseUrl: The base URL of the Turnkey API: https://api.turnkey.com
  • defaultOrganizationId: Your parent organization ID, which you can find in the Turnkey dashboard.
The rpId is used in WebAuthn to uniquely identify the server that the passkey is associated with. The rpId is typically the effective domain of the web application, which is the domain portion of the URL without any subdomains. For example, if your application is hosted at app.example.com, the rpId would typically be example.com. This ensures that credentials are scoped to the correct domain and cannot be used by other domains, enhancing security.
First, wrap your application with the TurnkeyProvider in your app/layout.tsx file:
app/layout.tsx
Then, create a new file app/add-passkey.tsx where we’ll implement the passkey functionality:
app/add-passkey.tsx

Authenticate the User

Now that that the Passkey Client is initialized, we’ll call the login function which will prompt the user to authenticate with their passkey. Additionally, this function will set the current user in local storage upon successful authentication, which will be used later when creating an additional authenticator.
The user object which gets stored in local storage is defined as follows:
app/add-passkey.tsx

Get the current user

Before creating a new passkey, we’ll get the current user. This function will retrieve the user from local storage, which was set after calling the login function. We’ll need the userId to create the authenticator in the final step.
app/add-passkey.tsx

Create User Passkey

Now that you have authenticated the user, you can call the createUserPasskey function to create a new user passkey credential. Calling this method will prompt the user to create a passkey, which will be securely stored by their browser. This credential will be associated with the user’s account and used for future authentication. Once the credential is created, we’ll use it in the next step to create a new authenticator for the user.
The credential includes an encoded challenge and attestation. The encoded challenge ensures the request is fresh and legitimate, while the attestation verifies the authenticity of the device creating the credential. For more information on how passkeys work, including details on the challenge and attestation objects, you can refer to the Passkeys Documentation.
app/add-passkey.tsx

Add the credential to the wallet

Now that you have created a new user passkey credential, we’ll use this credential to create a new passkey authenticator for the user. We’ll need the userId to create the authenticator, so we’ll get the current user first. This value comes from local storage which was set in the previous step when the user successfully authenticated via the login function.
app/add-passkey.tsx
app/add-passkey.tsx

Optional: Read/Write Sessions

In some cases, you may want to create a read/write session for the user to reduce the number of passkey prompts. This session can be used instead of the passkey to sign requests to Turnkey’s API to improve the user experience. In the this tutorial we used the passkey to authenticate the request to create a new authenticator. The result is that the user will be prompted 3 times:
  1. To login
  2. To create the new passkey
  3. To authenticate the request to create a new authenticator
By creating a read/write session, we can reduce the number of passkey prompts to 2:
  1. To login and create a session
  2. To authenticate the request to create a new authenticator
To create a read/write session, we simply replace passkeyClient.login() with passkeyClient.loginWithReadwriteSession():
src/add-passkey.ts
Assuming the login is successful, a read/write session object will be stored in local storage. We’ll use the stored session in conjunction with the iframe client to authenticate the create authenticator request.
We’ll use the active client returned from the useTurnkey hook which will be initialized with the read/write session. The rest of the code remains the same.
app/add-passkey.tsx

Conclusion

In this guide, we’ve walked through the process of adding a new credential to an existing wallet using the Turnkey SDK. By following these steps, you can improve the usability of your application by allowing users to create multiple authentication methods. This flexibility enables users to add a hardware security device like a Yubikey, or a native passkey via providers like iCloud keychain or 1Password, enhancing their overall experience with your application. For a complete example, check out our demo embedded wallet.