How to assign storefront role while registration in OSF – Oracle Commerce cloud

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Summary

In Oracle Commerce Cloud (B2B), assigning a storefront role during registration requires orchestrating specific APIs across the ccstore and ccadmin scopes. The process diverges depending on whether the user is creating a new account (self-registration) or a new contact under an existing organization (requiring approval). The critical path involves creating the user profile first, followed by a privileged call to assign the role, and finally handling the organization relationship.

Root Cause

The confusion stems from the separation of concerns in Oracle Commerce Cloud’s architecture:

  1. Identity vs. Authorization: User creation (Identity) happens via public storefront APIs (ccstore), but role assignment (Authorization) requires administrative privileges, necessitating the ccadmin API.
  2. Asynchronous Approval: B2B workflows often require an admin to approve new contacts, meaning the role assignment cannot always be completed immediately in the same synchronous flow if the account is in a “pending” state.

Why This Happens in Real Systems

B2B commerce platforms prioritize security and governance.

  • Least Privilege: Allowing a public API to assign roles would be a massive security vulnerability. Therefore, the system forces a context switch from the public storefront to a trusted admin context.
  • Organizational Hierarchy: Users are not standalone; they belong to Organizations (Accounts). The system must validate that the user has permission to act on behalf of that organization before applying roles.

Real-World Impact

  • Broken User Onboarding: If the role isn’t assigned, the user creates an account but cannot view B2B pricing or restricted products, leading to immediate churn.
  • Support Overhead: Support tickets spike when users complain that “registration worked, but I can’t see anything.”
  • Security Risks: Hardcoding admin credentials in the storefront to solve the API context issue exposes the organization to account takeover risks.

Example or Code

The flow requires two distinct API calls. First, the standard registration via ccstore, then the role assignment via ccadmin.

// 1. Create the user (Public Storefront Context - ccstore)
// This registers the user but does not assign roles.
const userRegistration = await fetch('https://your-store.com/ccstore/v1/users', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    firstName: "Jane",
    lastName: "Doe",
    email: "jane.doe@example.com",
    password: "SecurePassword123!"
  })
});

const userData = await userRegistration.json();

// 2. Assign the Role (Admin Context - ccadmin)
// This requires an OAuth token with 'admin' or 'agent' privileges.
// You cannot perform this step from a pure client-side public request.
const roleAssignment = await fetch('https://your-admin-server.com/ccadmin/v1/users/' + userData.login + '/roles', {
  method: 'PUT',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
    'Authorization': 'Bearer ' // Crucial: Must be Admin Token
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    roles: ["storefront-role-name"]
  })
});

How Senior Engineers Fix It

Senior engineers solve this by decoupling the registration flow from the role assignment logic:

  1. Middleware Implementation: Do not rely on the client browser to assign roles. Use a backend middleware (or Oracle PaaS) to listen for the User Created event. When a new user is detected, this middleware (holding the secure ccadmin credentials) automatically assigns the correct role.
  2. Trigger Logic:
    • Scenario A (New Account): Immediately assign the role upon user creation.
    • Scenario B (New Contact): Wait for the organization approval trigger (or admin approval), then assign the role.
  3. Token Management: Ensure the system uses a robust OAuth flow to obtain the ccadmin token, rather than storing static credentials, to handle token expiration automatically.

Why Juniors Miss It

  • API Scope Confusion: Juniors often try to call the /users/roles endpoint via ccstore, not realizing it is an administrative function and strictly a ccadmin route.
  • Synchronous Expectation: They attempt to assign the role in the same line of code as the registration, failing to account for the approval delay inherent in B2B contact creation.
  • Frontend Responsibility: They try to handle role assignment via JavaScript in the browser, which fails due to CORS and lack of administrative privileges.