The difference between AWS Amplify and amazon-cognito-identity-js?

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I'm reviewing this demo of how to integrate Cognito with Angular, and it amazon-cognito-identity-js for the authorization service.

It seems that is what we should be using, but other tutorials install AWS Amplify as a whole:

npm i aws-amplify

Curious what the difference is and whether one is more current than the other?

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2 Answers

amazon-cognito-identity-js used to be a separate package specifically for Cognito. Recently they've been bundling all their SDKs into Amplify to streamline the integration process.

For instance in our iOS app the Cognito SDK had a number of issues that were resolved by moving to Amplify.

As you can see in the link below, this package is now maintained in the Amplify umbrella.

https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/tree/master/packages/amazon-cognito-identity-js

It used to be standalone here:

https://github.com/amazon-archives/amazon-cognito-identity-js

I would recommend going forward with Amplify as that is the direction that AWS development is headed internally, and amazon-cognito-identity-js is maintained as part of Amplify anyway.

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To add to the great answer by @DaveS. There are 3 official tools you can use to integrate Cognito in your app:

Amplify

  • Use it in client-side applications, where you'd use Amplify anyway - to leverage the premade auth UI components or to integrate with other services from the Amplify ecosystem: APIs, Analytics, Storage, etc.
  • Does not support secret-enabled Cognito app clients.
  • Cannot make authenticated (requiring AWS credentials) Cognito API calls (e.g. adminCreateUser) directly, but there's a workaround.

amazon-cognito-identity-js

  • It is a much smaller package and it comes as a part of Amplify (hosted in the Amplify monorepo).
  • It can still be used separately if you don't need any of the extra features provided by Amplify (save on the bundle size).
  • Does not support secret-enabled Cognito app clients.
  • Cannot make authenticated (requiring AWS credentials) Cognito API calls, e.g. adminCreateUser.
  • Can be used in the backend (unauthenticated Cognito APIs only).

AWS SDK

  • Low-level as it can get.
  • Provides access to all (authenticated and non-authenticated) Cognito APIs. For authenticated, make sure the code has access to AWS credentials.
  • Can work with secret-enabled Cognito client apps (you need to sign the requests with the secret).
  • Can be used in both client (for unauthenticated APIs only, otherwise you're exposing secrets) and server applications.

Code samples for all 3 can be found here: AWS Cognito: Amplify vs amazon-cognito-identity-js vs AWS SDK.

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