Node.js Available Methods

All resource operations are mounted as sub-APIs on the clerkClient object. You can find the full list of available operations in the JavaScript Backend SDK documentation. To access a resource, you must first instantiate a clerkClient instance.

Instantiate a default clerkClient instance

If you would like to use the default instance of clerkClient provided by the SDK, you can provide the CLERK_SECRET_KEY as an environment variable and instantiate clerkClient without passing configuration options.

import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/clerk-sdk-node'

const userList = await clerkClient.users.getUserList()

const pkg = require('@clerk/clerk-sdk-node')
const clerkClient = pkg.default

clerkClient.sessions
  .getSessionList()
  .then((sessions) => console.log(sessions))
  .catch((error) => console.error(error))

Instantiate a custom clerkClient instance

If you would like to customize the behavior of the SDK, you can instantiate a clerkClient instance yourself by calling createClerkClient and passing in options.

The example below shows how to use createClerkClient to create a clerkClient instance and pass a Clerk secret key instead of setting a CLERK_SECRET_KEY environment variable.

import { createClerkClient } from '@clerk/clerk-sdk-node'

const clerkClient = createClerkClient({ secretKey: 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY' })

const clientList = await clerkClient.clients.getClientList()

const Clerk = require('@clerk/clerk-sdk-node/cjs/instance').default

const clerkClient = Clerk({ secretKey: 'YOUR_SECRET_KEY' })

clerkClient.sessions
  .getSessionList()
  .then((sessions) => console.log(sessions))
  .catch((error) => console.error(error))

Customizing resources

The following options are available for you to customize the behaviour of the clerkClient object.

For every option, the resolution is as follows, in order of descending precedence:

• option passed
• environment variable (if applicable)
• default

This means that if you pass an option to the constructor, it will always take precedence over an environment variable.

Another available environment variable is CLERK_LOGGING. You can set its value to true to enable additional logging that may be of use when debugging an issue.