ss-auth

Stupid-Simple Authentication

This project contains code which shows how to implement your own user authentication in a Node.js web app with MongoDB.

This project is meant to go along with the talk I gave at Twilio Signal 2017. The talk walks you through how authentication works, from the ground up.

Talk on youtube

Slides

Installation

Installing this project is simple, run the following commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/rdegges/ss-auth.git
$ cd ss-auth
$ npm install

Next, you need to set two environment variables:

• SESSION_SECRET_KEY
• JWT_SIGNING_KEY

The SESSION_SECRET_KEY value must be a long, randomly generated string. This value should be unique on your production servers, and never checked into version control.

The JWT_SIGNING_KEY must be a randomly generated, 256-byte, base64 encoded string. You can generate this value using the secure-random node library like so:

const secureRandom = require("secure-random");

console.log(secureRandom(256, { type: "Buffer" }).toString("base64"));

Like the SESSION_SECRET_KEY, JWT_SIGNING_KEY must also never be checked into version control, and must be the same on all production servers.

Finally, you can run:

$ npm start

To launch the web server.

NOTE: You must have MongoDB installed and working locally in order to run this project. It will work with all the default MongoDB options.

TIP: Read through the settings specified in settings.js. There are several options you will want to enable when running a production website.

Purpose

This project shows how to implement basic user authentication in a Node web app. The accompanying talk explains how HTTP authentication works in a ground up way, explaining how each little piece works behind the scenes.

If you've ever wanted to know how authentication works, see the accompanying talk.

Questions

Got questions? Hit me up! I'm r@rdegges.com.