Cognito Local

A Good Enough offline emulator for Amazon Cognito.

• Supported Features
  • Lambda triggers
• Usage
  • via Docker
  • via Node
  • Using a different port
  • Updating your application
  • Creating your first User Pool
• Configuration
  • HTTPS endpoints with self-signed certificates
  • User Pools and Clients
• Known Limitations
• Multi-factor authentication
• Confirmation codes
• Advanced
  • Debugging Cognito Local

Supported Features

Feature	Support
AddCustomAttributes	❌
AdminAddUserToGroup	✅
AdminConfirmSignUp	✅
AdminCreateUser	🕒 (partial support)
AdminDeleteUser	✅
AdminDeleteUserAttributes	✅
AdminDisableProviderForUser	❌
AdminDisableUser	✅
AdminEnableUser	✅
AdminForgetDevice	❌
AdminGetDevice	❌
AdminGetUser	✅
AdminInitiateAuth	🕒 (partial support)
AdminLinkProviderForUser	❌
AdminListDevices	❌
AdminListGroupsForUser	✅
AdminListUserAuthEvents	❌
AdminRemoveUserFromGroup	✅
AdminResetUserPassword	❌
AdminRespondToAuthChallenge	❌
AdminSetUserMFAPreference	❌
AdminSetUserPassword	✅
AdminSetUserSettings	❌
AdminUpdateAuthEventFeedback	❌
AdminUpdateDeviceStatus	❌
AdminUpdateUserAttributes	✅
AdminUserGlobalSignOut	❌
AssociateSoftwareToken	❌
ChangePassword	✅
ConfirmDevice	❌
ConfirmForgotPassword	🕒 (partial support)
ConfirmSignUp	🕒 (partial support)
CreateGroup	✅
CreateIdentityProvider	❌
CreateResourceServer	❌
CreateUserImportJob	❌
CreateUserPool	✅
CreateUserPoolClient	✅
CreateUserPoolDomain	❌
DeleteGroup	✅
DeleteIdentityProvider	❌
DeleteResourceServer	❌
DeleteUser	✅²
DeleteUserAttributes	✅
DeleteUserPool	✅²
DeleteUserPoolClient	✅²
DeleteUserPoolDomain	❌
DescribeIdentityProvider	❌
DescribeResourceServer	❌
DescribeRiskConfiguration	❌
DescribeUserImportJob	❌
DescribeUserPool	✅
DescribeUserPoolClient	✅
DescribeUserPoolDomain	❌
ForgetDevice	❌
ForgotPassword	🕒 (partial support)
GetCSVHeader	❌
GetDevice	❌
GetGroup	✅²
GetIdentityProviderByIdentifier	❌
GetSigningCertificate	❌
GetUICustomization	❌
GetUser	✅
GetUserAttributeVerificationCode	✅
GetUserPoolMfaConfig	❌
GlobalSignOut	❌
InitiateAuth	🕒 (partial support)
ListDevices	❌
ListGroups	✅¹
ListIdentityProviders	❌
ListResourceServers	❌
ListTagsForResource	❌
ListUserImportJobs	❌
ListUserPoolClients	✅¹
ListUserPools	✅¹
ListUsers	✅¹
ListUsersInGroup	✅¹
ResendConfirmationCode	❌
RespondToAuthChallenge	🕒 (partial support)
RevokeToken	🕒 (partial support)
SetRiskConfiguration	❌
SetUICustomization	❌
SetUserMFAPreference	❌
SetUserPoolMfaConfig	❌
SetUserSettings	❌
SignUp	🕒 (partial support)
StartUserImportJob	❌
StopUserImportJob	❌
TagResource	❌
UntagResource	❌
UpdateAuthEventFeedback	❌
UpdateDeviceStatus	❌
UpdateGroup	✅
UpdateIdentityProvider	❌
UpdateResourceServer	❌
UpdateUserAttributes	✅
UpdateUserPool	✅
UpdateUserPoolClient	✅²
UpdateUserPoolDomain	❌
VerifySoftwareToken	❌
VerifyUserAttribute	✅

¹ does not support pagination or query filters, all results and attributes will be returned in the first request.

² "requires developer credentials" is not enforced

Additional supported features:

• JWKs verification

Lambda triggers

cognito-local can emulate Cognito's Lambda Triggers by either invoking a real Lambda in an AWS account or a Lambda running on your local machine (via any tool which supports the LambdaInvoke functionality, for example serverless-offline).

To configure a Lambda Trigger, modify your configuration file to include a TriggerFunctions object with a key for the Trigger and the value as your Lambda function name.

{
  "TriggerFunctions": {
    "CustomMessage": "my-function-name"
  }
}

If you're using local invoke, you will also need to modify the LambdaClient.endpoint configuration to tell cognito-local how to connect to your local Lambda server:

{
  "LambdaClient": {
    "endpoint": "http://host:port"
  },
  "TriggerFunctions": {
    "CustomMessage": "my-local-function-name"
  }
}

If you're running cognito-local in Docker and your local Lambda functions on your host, you may need to use the Docker local networking hostname as your endpoint. For example, on my Mac I use http://host.docker.internal:3002.

Supported Lambda Triggers

Trigger	Operation	Support
CreateAuthChallenge	*	❌
CustomEmailSender	*	❌
CustomMessage	AdminCreateUser	✅
CustomMessage	Authentication	✅
CustomMessage	ForgotPassword	✅
CustomMessage	ResendCode	❌
CustomMessage	SignUp	✅
CustomMessage	UpdateUserAttribute	✅
CustomMessage	VerifyUserAttribute	✅
DefineAuthChallenge	*	❌
PostAuthentication	PostAuthentication_Authentication	✅
PostConfirmation	ConfirmForgotPassword	✅
PostConfirmation	ConfirmSignUp	✅
PreAuthentication	*	❌
PreSignUp	PreSignUp_AdminCreateUser	❌
PreSignUp	PreSignUp_ExternalProvider	❌
PreSignUp	PreSignUp_SignUp	✅
PreTokenGeneration	TokenGeneration_AuthenticateDevice	❌
PreTokenGeneration	TokenGeneration_Authentication	✅
PreTokenGeneration	TokenGeneration_HostedAuth	❌
PreTokenGeneration	TokenGeneration_NewPasswordChallenge	❌
PreTokenGeneration	TokenGeneration_RefreshTokens	✅
UserMigration	Authentication	✅
UserMigration	ForgotPassword	❌
VerifyAuthChallengeResponse	*	❌

Known limitations

1. Incomplete support for triggers
2. Triggers can only be configured globally and not per-pool

Usage

via Docker

docker run --publish 9229:9229 jagregory/cognito-local:latest

Cognito Local will now be listening on http://localhost:9229.

To persist your database between runs, mount the /app/.cognito volume to your host machine:

docker run --publish 9229:9229 --volume $(pwd)/.cognito:/app/.cognito jagregory/cognito-local:latest

via Node

npm install --save-dev cognito-local
yarn add --dev cognito-local

# if node_modules/.bin is in your $PATH
cognito-local
# OR
yarn cognito-local
# OR
npx cognito-local

Cognito Local will now be listening on http://localhost:9229.

Using a different port

cognito-local runs on port 9229 by default. If you would like to use a different port, you can set the PORT environment variable:

PORT=4000 cognito-local

If you're running in Docker, you can also rebind the published ports when you run:

docker run -p4000:9229 jagregory/cognito-local

Or combine the two approaches by setting an environment variable when you run:

docker run -p4000:4000 -e PORT=4000 jagregory/cognito-local

The same can be done in docker-compose with environment variables and port binding in compose.

Updating your application

You will need to update your AWS code to use the local address for Cognito's endpoint. For example, if you're using amazon-cognito-identity-js you can update your CognitoUserPool usage to override the endpoint:

new CognitoUserPool({
  /* ... normal options ... */
  endpoint: "http://localhost:9229/",
});

You only want to do this when you're running locally on your development machine.

Creating your first User Pool

Once you've started Cognito Local the easiest way to create a new User Pool is with the aws-cli:

aws --endpoint http://localhost:9229 cognito-idp create-user-pool --pool-name MyUserPool

Replace the --endpoint with whatever host and port you're running Cognito Local on.

If you run ls .cognito/db you will now see a new file called local_???.json where ??? is the Id from the output of the command you just ran.

You may commit this file to version control if you would like all your team to use a common User Pool when developing, or you can have each team member run the above command when they first start using Cognito Local.

Configuration

You do not need to supply a config unless you need to customise the behaviour of Congito Local. If you are using Lambda triggers with local Lambdas, you will definitely need to override LambdaClient.endpoint at a minimum.

Before starting Cognito Local, create a config file if one doesn't already exist:

mkdir .cognito && echo '{}' > .cognito/config.json

You can edit that .cognito/config.json and add any of the following settings:

Setting	Type	Default	Description
LambdaClient	object		Any setting you would pass to the AWS.Lambda Node.js client
LambdaClient.credentials.accessKeyId	string	local
LambdaClient.credentials.secretAccessKey	string	local
LambdaClient.endpoint	string	local
LambdaClient.region	string	local
TokenConfig.IssuerDomain	string	http://localhost:9229	Issuer domain override
TriggerFunctions	object	{}	Trigger name to Function name mapping
TriggerFunctions.CustomMessage	string		CustomMessage local lambda function name
TriggerFunctions.PostAuthentication	string		PostAuthentication local lambda function name
TriggerFunctions.PostConfirmation	string		PostConfirmation local lambda function name
TriggerFunctions.PreSignUp	string		PostConfirmation local lambda function name
TriggerFunctions.PreTokenGeneration	string		PreTokenGeneration local lambda function name
TriggerFunctions.UserMigration	string		PreSignUp local lambda function name
UserPoolDefaults	object		Default behaviour to use for the User Pool
UserPoolDefaults.MfaConfiguration	string		MFA type
UserPoolDefaults.UsernameAttributes	string[]	["email"]	Username alias attributes

The default config is:

{
  "LambdaClient": {
    "credentials": {
      "accessKeyId": "local",
      "secretAccessKey": "local"
    },
    "region": "local"
  },
  "TokenConfig": {
    "IssuerDomain": "http://localhost:9229"
  },
  "TriggerFunctions": {},
  "UserPoolDefaults": {
    "UsernameAttributes": ["email"]
  }
}

HTTPS endpoints with self-signed certificates

If you need your Lambda endpoint to be HTTPS with a self-signed certificate, you will need to disable certificate verification in Node for Cognito Local. The easiest way to do this is to run Cognito Local with the NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED environment variable.

NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 cognito-local
docker run --env NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 ...

User Pools and Clients

User Pools are stored in .cognito/db/$userPoolId.json. As not all API features are supported yet, you'll likely find yourself needing to manually edit this file to update the User Pool config or users. If you do modify this file, you will need to restart Cognito Local.

User Pool Clients are stored in .cognito/db/clients.json. You can create new User Pool Clients using the CreateUserPoolClient API.

Known Limitations

• Many features are missing
• Users can't be disabled
• Only USER_PASSWORD_AUTH flow is supported
• Not all Lambda triggers are supported

Multi-factor authentication

There is limited support for Multi-Factor Authentication in Cognito Local. Currently, if a User Pool is configured to have a MfaConfiguration of OPTIONAL or ON and a user has an MFAOption of SMS then Cognito Local will follow the MFA flows. If a user does not have a phone_number attribute or any other type of MFA is used, Cognito Local will fail.

Confirmation codes

When a user is prompted for a code of some kind (confirming their account, multi-factor auth), Cognito Local will write a message to the console with their confirmation code instead of emailing it to the user.

For example:

╭───────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│                                                       │
│   Confirmation Code Delivery                          │
│                                                       │
│   Username:    c63651ae-59c6-4ede-ae7d-a8400ff65e8d   │
│   Destination: [email protected]                    │
│   Code:        3520                                   │
│                                                       │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

If a Custom Message lambda is configured, the output of the function invocation will be printed in the console too (verbosely!).

Advanced

Debugging Cognito Local

There's a few different ways you can debug Cognito Local. Currently, it's best to debug Cognito Locally via Node, and not with Docker.

Verbose logging

If you just need more logs to understand what Cognito Local is doing, you can use the DEBUG environment variable.

DEBUG=1 yarn start

Which will print extra debug logs to the terminal (with {...} replaced by detailed information):

[1639034724411] INFO: NONE NONE Cognito Local running on http://127.0.0.1:9229
[1639034724872] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool start {...}
[1639034724873] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool CognitoServiceImpl.createUserPool {...}
[1639034724873] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool UserPoolServiceImpl.create {...}
[1639034724873] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool createDataStore {...}
[1639034724873] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool Creating new data store {...}
[1639034724874] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool DataStore.save {...}
[1639034724876] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool DataStore.get {...}
[1639034724877] DEBUG: 7f53abbd CreateUserPool end {...}
[1639034724882] DEBUG: 7f53abbd NONE request completed {...}

VSCode debugger

There's a launch configuration included in the repo at .vscode/launch.json.

If you open Run and Debug and start the CognitoLocal configuration it will start Cognito Local and attach the debugger.

Put a breakpoint in src/bin/start.ts or in the target for the API call you want to debug (e.g. src/targets/createUserPool.ts) and run your code that uses Cognito Local or a CLI command.

WebStorm debugger

There's a WebStorm run configuration included in the repo at .idea/runConfigurations/CognitoLocal.xml.

A CognitoLocal entry should appear in the Run Configurations drop-down in the toolbar, which you can Run or Debug. Alternatively, the Run > Debug menu will let you pick a Run Configuration to launch.

Put a breakpoint in src/bin/start.ts or in the target for the API call you want to debug (e.g. src/targets/createUserPool.ts) and run your code that uses Cognito Local or a CLI command.

Chrome DevTools

Note: due to a poor choice of ports on my part, Chrome will spam Cognito Local with HTTP requests if you have the NodeJS DevTools open. I'll change the default port for Cognito Local at some point to fix this.

Launch Cognito Local using the start:debug script:

yarn start:debug

This will configure NodeJS to start the inspector on port 9230.

Open Chrome and navigate to chrome://inspect. Click the Open dedicated DevTools for Node link which will open a new DevTools window. You can then open the Sources tab and browse to a Cognito Local file, or press Cmd+P or Ctrl+P to open the file navigator and open src/bin/start.ts or a target you want to debug then place a breakpoint and run your code that uses Cognito Local or a CLI command.