If you’ve visited edx.org lately, you might’ve noticed that we now offer two new options: signing in via Google and Facebook!
You can, of course, still sign in with your edX account information, but for folks like me who hate having to memorize passwords for a dozen different accounts across the web, being able to consolidate my sign-ins will be very handy.
From an engineering perspective, it’s also exciting since we didn’t have to do anything! … Well, okay, that’s a bit of a lie. What I mean by that is, most of the code for this integration was an API written by Google developer John Cox, as part of our partnership — read John’s blog post about the API. Once that API was created, all we had to do was configure the Facebook and Google sign-in methods and add the new UI elements to our sign-in page. Now edX—and anyone running their own website using edX’s open-source platform—can allow their users to sign in with Google, Facebook, or any other third-party account they like.
And since edX is committed to open source and open access, the next feature we launch could be yours! Google went through the same pull request process any other open source contributor goes through, and we’re always open to new contributions. If you’re interested in how this feature got written, feel free to check out the pull request for Google’s code submission, and if you’re a developer who would like to contribute yourself, check out our contribution guidelines.
The response to the launch has been awesome, by the way: though it’s been on the site for less than a month, thousands of users have been signing into edX with Facebook and Google each day. Check it out here!
