Dashboard oauth client and JS SDK for organizations

The Archive Product Creation
14

Hey @kefir135,

Thanks for checking back in on this. I totally understand your frustration with this, and am very sorry. As someone who cares passionately for the product creator experience and am familiar with all of its complexities, I know it’s tough to be promised things and have us not deliver in a timely fashion. For this I apologize, but hopefully I can use this post to unblock you in any way possible and provide some transparency.

First, I think it is worth pointing out that while neither of the things you mentioned have been completed yet (OAuth client UI on the dashboard, and org support in our JS SDKs), it is 100% possible right now to start building a browser-based device setup app as @G65434_2 has alluded to and is working on in his thread.

  • OAuth clients can be created via a POST request using cURL. In-depth instructions on this can be found both in the guide on authentication and security and in the reference docs. Adding the UI on the dashboard will certainly be helpful and simplify this step, but is really only a view layer on top of existing API endpoints
  • The API endpoints for creating a customer in a JS context are in place. This involves using the implicit grant flow. This is discussed in detail in @G65434_2’s thread
  • Once this is done, you can start the device setup process with our SoftAP setup Library

Soon, this whole process will be streamlined and wrapped up nicely in Particle JS, but the “guts” are all there for you to work with.

Also, just to shed a little light on our priorities and why things may be moving slower than we all would like on this front: We are still a small startup with a small engineering team (~10) that is taking on a mountain of different tasks. Right now, a very high percentage of our engineering efforts is going towards shipping the Electron on-time and in a way that we’re proud of. There is a ton that makes shipping the Electron more complex than the Photon, most notably shifting to an environment where viewing, managing, and conserving cellular data usage (the user pays for this data) becomes a priority unlike Wi-Fi (data is “free” and not necessary to manage). Unfortunately, due to the size of our team, this forces us to prioritize our efforts and sometimes de-prioritize other things we know we need to build.

In addition, @nexxy has recently chosen to move on from Particle (we will miss her but are excited for her next endeavor!) which leaves a large hole with making progress on open-source JS projects. The combination of these two factors is the reason why these tasks have not been completed.

I say these things not to shed responsibility, but to be open and transparent as possible to you so we can better support one another moving forward. Once the Electron has shipped and/or replacing our JS engineer happens, I’m very confident that much of our engineering efforts can return to the product creator experience. As always, we encourage ongoing feedback and dialogue to make sure that we are equipping you with the tools to build your connected product (after all, that’s why we’re all here isn’t it :smile: ?).

Again, I apologize for your frustration and hope this provided some clarity/unblocking goodness.

Jeff

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