Page 9

Dec 7

Fetch users by latest activity

Category: API
Published: Dec 7

Get a better understanding of your user's activity by using our updated Backend API endpoints which are now filterable by activity

Filter Users by their latest activity

Use the new last_active_at_since parameter to filter users according to their latest activity date.

For example, if you were interested to know which users were active between 2023-11-23 and the current day, you could construct a query like this:

GET /v1/users?last_active_at_since=1700690400000

Note that session activity is registered continuously throughout the day so a query using a condition with the current day is perfectly valid.

You can also use last_active_at as an ordering parameter to sort users by how recently they were active:

GET /v1/users?order_by=last_active_at

Retrieve a single user's latest activity data

You will also now get last_active_at in your response when retrieving user details with the GET /users/{user_id} endpoint.

Dec 6

Simplified Pricing and updated Billing Dashboard

Category: Dashboard
Published: Dec 6

Introducing a better pricing structure for all companies, and a better way to see your usage.

Simplified pricing structure

We've completely overhauled and simplified our pricing structure. All plans now include 10k MAUs! Our announcement blog post explains the rationale behind this major shift. For a complete break down, check out our beautifully redesigned pricing page.

Updated Billing Dashboard

We've also overhauled the Plan & Billing section of our Dashboard so you can more easily understand your current plans usage. If you're one of the folks who shared that our old billing section was inadequate, this update is for you.

A preview of more to come...

You may notice a new look and feel that it's disjointed with the rest of our site. We're working hard behind the scenes on a complete overhaul of our dashboard! Stay tuned for an improved experience...

Dec 1

Brute-force attack protection with Account Lockout

Category: Security
Published: Dec 1

Fight back against bots and protect your users from brute-force attacks with Account Lockout

What is Account Lockout?

Account Lockout is a feature that protects you and your users from brute-force attacks where bots or other nefarious actors repeatedly attempt to gain access. In addition to our other methods of bot detection, now, when a configurable limit of attempts is exceeded – the user's account will be temporarily locked, and they will be prompted to wait for a cooldown period before they can try again.

This prevents malevolent actors from guessing users' credentials by trying out multiple possible codes in rapid succession (brute-force attack).

What do I need to do to activate it?

Well, nothing. We've enabled Account Lockout on all accounts with default settings that shouldn't be intrusive for your users but will certainly inconvenience bots and scripts.

Starting today, you can head to our User & Authentication > Attack Protection and configure the settings to your application's needs. Specifically, you're able to adjust the number of failed attempts before a user's account is locked and the duration for which they will be prevented from signing in afterwards.

It is also possible to disable Account Lockout, but we highly recommend you keep it on :)

Head to our docs to learn more about brute force attacks and locking user accounts.

Nov 8

Use Clerk with Hono middleware

Category: Community
Published: Nov 8

Hono is a great minimal web framework for building applications across any edge runtime and now with Hono's middleware and our community SDK, you can secure it with Clerk.

Install the middleware

To install the Clerk middleware for Hono, follow the instructions provided to set up and configure the middleware in Hono.

npm i hono @hono/clerk-auth @clerk/backend

Configure the middleware

Before you start using the Clerk middleware, you'll need to set the following environment variables:

CLERK_SECRET_KEY=<your-secret-key>
CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=<your-publishable-key>

Use the middleware

Here is a quick example on how to use the Clerk middleware for Hono:

import { clerkMiddleware, getAuth } from '@hono/clerk-auth'
import { Hono } from 'hono'

const app = new Hono()

app.use('*', clerkMiddleware())
app.get('/', (c) => {
  const auth = getAuth(c)

  if (!auth?.userId) {
    return c.json({
      message: 'You are not logged in.',
    })
  }

  return c.json({
    message: 'You are logged in!',
    userId: auth.userId,
  })
})

export default app

And that's it. Your app is now secured and running on the edge. Find more about Clerk's Hono middleware on GitHub.

Oct 26

Add custom pages to <UserProfile /> and <OrganizationProfile />

Category: React
Published: Oct 26

Customize your user and organization profiles by adding custom pages and external links to the navigation sidebar.

Previously if you were using Clerk's <UserProfile /> and <OrganizationProfile /> to allow your user's to view and manage their own profile settings your ability to extend them was fairly limited. This meant if you wanted to provide controls for other options outside of what Clerk's defaults, you were stuck. With our latest release, these components now allow for much richer customization. Allowing you to extend Clerk's pre-built components with whatever context is right for your app and your users.

UserProfile Customization

The <UserProfile /> component now supports (view docs):

Custom Pages: Add your app's custom pages inside Clerk's <UserProfile /> UI by passing our new <UserProfile.Page> compound component
External Links: Add external links to the navigation sidebar using the <UserProfile.Link> component
Reordering: Create a custom sidebar by reordering the routes (like our defaults: Account and Security)

Here what an example of how to use our new React API for UserProfile customization:

<UserProfile>
  <UserProfile.Page label="Custom Page" url="custom" labelIcon={<CustomIcon />}>
    <MyCustomPageContent />
  </UserProfile.Page>
  <UserProfile.Link label="External" url="/home" labelIcon={<Icon />} />
  <UserProfile.Page label="account" />
  <UserProfile.Page label="security" />
</UserProfile>

OrganizationProfile Customization

Just like UserProfile, the <OrganizationProfile /> component offers similar customization options for organization profiles (view docs)

Custom Pages
External Links
Reordering (our defaults Members and Settings)

Here is an example of how to use the React API for OrganizationProfile customization:

<OrganizationProfile>
  <OrganizationProfile.Page label="Custom Page" url="custom" labelIcon={<CustomIcon />}>
    <MyCustomPageContent />
  </OrganizationProfile.Page>
  <OrganizationProfile.Link label="External" url="/home" labelIcon={<Icon />} />
  <OrganizationProfile.Page label="members" />
  <OrganizationProfile.Page label="settings" />
</OrganizationProfile>

For more information and implementation instructions, please refer to our documentation for <UserProfile /> and <OrganizationProfile />.

Other Fixes & Improvements

Added support for creating users with SHA-256 algorithm password hashes, via the Backend API. SHA-256 password hashes will be transparently migrated to the more secure Bcrypt algorithm, the first time the user signs in

Oct 20

New changelog + much more

Category: Company
Published: Oct 20

Interested in checking out something new from the Clerk team? Well you're looking at it; our fancy new dedicated Changelog

Up until now, we've been using our blog to share regular updates about the latest Clerk feature releases, but that ends today. Going forward we'll use the all-new Clerk changelog to keep you up-to-date with our latest releases. Come for the feature updates, stay for the scrolling comet tail in the sidebar.

Proxying Clerk's Frontend API

Do you dream about setting up a domain within Clerk but you're unable to use CNAMEs or want more control over your integration (Weird dream buddy BUT we're not judging)? We're here to make those dreams a reality with our new proxying capability for our Frontend API. Configure your proxy of choice (like NGINX) to directly talk to our Frontend API and that's it.

This is a particularly useful feature for folks using our multi-domain functionality, as you now don't need to set up DNS records for each of your satellite domains. Head to the docs to learn about more using a proxy in your project - and don't continue to let your dreams be dreams. Clerk believes in you.

Coalescing in your JWT Templates

This next one is likely a crowd pleaser... You're now able to have fallback conditions right inside of your JWT Templates. This reduces the amount of code you have to maintain inside your apps, while also making your templates simpler and more concise. Along with interpolation that was released a few months ago, this was one of the most commonly requested features in JWT Templates.

// an example template
{
  "greeting": "{{ user.full_name || 'Awesome user' }}",
  "verified": "{{ user.has_verified_phone || user.has_verified_email }}",
  "level": "{{ user.public_metadata.level || 9999 }}"
}

// the output from the example template
{
  "greeting": "Awesome user",
  "verified": true,
  "level": 9999
}

Use the || to set default values right inside the JWT template. Have a read through our JWT Template docs to learn more.

Some scheduled maintenance

Our primary database is scheduled for routine maintenance on Tuesday, 23/10/23, at 06:00 AM UTC. The maintenance is expected to last 60 seconds or less. Follow along at status.clerk.com

Other Fixes & improvements

We've upgraded our TLS certificates for the Frontend API and Accounts domains to version 1.2

Clerk Changelog