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 Clerk 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();

import { sessions } from '@clerk/clerk-sdk-node';

const sessionList = await sessions.getSessionList();

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

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

const pkg = require('@clerk/clerk-sdk-node');
const { clients } = pkg;

clients
  .getClient(clientId)
  .then((client) => console.log(client))
  .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.

Option	Description	Default	Environment variable
secretKey	Server key for api.clerk.com. Can be found in your Clerk Dashboard on the API Keys page.	none	CLERK_SECRET_KEY
apiVersion	API version to use	v4	CLERK_API_VERSION
apiUrl	For debugging	https://api.clerk.com	CLERK_API_URL
httpOptions	HTTP client options	{}	N/A

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.