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Managing User Identity with Iterable's React Native SDK

As people use your mobile apps, you'll likely want to save data and events to their Iterable user profiles. Your marketing team can then use this data to send relevant, personalized messages.

Before you can save data, you'll need to identify the user it belongs to. This guide describes how to do so.

In this article

Identifying users by user ID

To identify a user by the userId field, call the static setUserId method on the Iterable class.

  • Method declaration:

    static setUserId(userId: string | undefined)
static setUserId(userId: string | undefined, authToken?: string | undefined)
    Parameter Name Description
    userId The user ID to associate with the current user.
    authToken A valid, pre-fetched JWT the SDK can use to authenticate API requests for this user.

  • Description:

    These methods associate the current user with the specified userId. If your Iterable project doesn't yet have a user with that userId, setUserId creates one.

    They also add a placeholder email address to the user's Iterable profile, in the form: userId + hash + @placeholder.email (email-based projects only. To learn more, read Handling Anonymous Users.

    NOTES

    • Specify an email or a userId, but not both.
    • Iterable's React Native SDK persists a userId or email across app sessions and restarts, until you manually change it.
    • Assuming IterableConfig.autoPushRegistration is true (its default value), setting a userId or email automatically registers the device for push notifications and sends the deviceId and token to Iterable.
    • Use the authToken parameter to pass in a pre-fetched JWT, as needed, to avoid race conditions.

  • Example:

    Iterable.setUserId("testUser123");

    This example associates the app's current user with a userId of testUser123. The placeholder email it creates would look something like testUser123+1033671565@placeholder.email.

Identifying users by email

To identify a user by their email address, call the static setEmail method on the Iterable class:

  • Method declaration:

    static setEmail(email: string | undefined)
static setEmail(email: string | undefined, authToken?: string | undefined)
    Parameter Name Description
    email The email address to associate with the current user.
    authToken A valid, pre-fetched JWT the SDK can use to authenticate API requests for this user.

  • Description:

    These methods associates the current user with the specified email. If your Iterable project doesn't yet have a user profile with that email, setEmail creates one.

    NOTES

    • Specify an email or a userId, but not both.
    • Iterable's React Native SDK persists a userId or email across app sessions and restarts, until you manually change it.
    • Assuming IterableConfig.autoPushRegistration is true (its default value), setting a userId or email automatically registers the device for push notifications and sends the deviceId and token to Iterable.
    • Use the authToken parameter to pass in a pre-fetched JWT, as needed, to avoid race conditions.

  • Example:

    Iterable.setEmail("user@example.com");

    This example associates the app's current user with an email of user@example.com.

Getting the current userId

To get the userId your app associates with the current user, call the static getUserId method on the Iterable class.

  • Method declaration:

    static getUserId(): Promise<string | undefined>

    Returns a Promise. Use then to get the results.

  • Description:

    Returns the userId your app associates with its current user.

  • Example:

    Iterable.getUserId().then(userId => {
    console.log("Current userId: " + userId);
});

    This example fetches the current userId and outputs it to the console.

Getting the current email

To get the email associated with the current user, call the static getEmail method on the Iterable class.

  • Method declaration:

    static getEmail(): Promise<string | undefined>

    Returns a Promise. Use then to get the results.

  • Description:

    Returns the email your app associates with its current user.

  • Example:

    Iterable.getEmail().then(email => {
    console.log("Current email: " + email);
});

    This example fetches the current email and outputs it to the console.

Modifying an email address

To modify a user's email address, or to give a real (non-placeholder) email address to a user identified by userId, call the static updateEmail method on the Iterable class.

  • Method declaration:

    static updateEmail(email: string, authToken?: string | undefined)
    Parameter Name Description
    email The new email address to associate with the current user.
    authToken A valid, pre-fetched JWT the SDK can use to authenticate API requests for this user.

  • Description:

    This method changes the value of the email field on the current user's Iterable profile.

  • Example:

    Iterable.updateEmail("newEmail@example.com")

    This example changes the current user's email to newEmail@example.com.

Signing out

To tell the SDK that the current user has signed out, set email or userId (whichever is currently set) to null:

Iterable.setEmail(null)

Iterable.setUserId(null)

Assuming IterableConfig.autoPushRegistration is true (its default value), setting email or userId to null prevents Iterable from sending further push notifications to that user, for that app, on that device. On the user's Iterable profile, in the devices array, notice that endpointEnabled is false for the device in question.

TIP

To manually disable push notifications to the device, call the static disableDeviceForCurrentUser or disableDeviceForAllUsers method on the Iterable class.

Further reading

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