passport-jwt

A Passport strategy for authenticating with a JSON Web Token.

This module lets you authenticate endpoints using a JSON Web token. It is intended to be used to secure RESTful endpoints without sessions.

Install

npm install passport-jwt

Usage

Configure Strategy

The jwt authentication strategy is constructed as follows:

new JwtStrategy(options, verify)

options is an object literal containing options to control how the token is extracted from the request or verified.

• secretOrKey is a REQUIRED string or buffer containing the secret (symmetric) or PEM-encoded public key (asymmetric) for verifying the token's signature.
• issuer: If defined the token issuer (iss) will be verified against this value.
• audience: If defined, the token audience (aud) will be verified against this value.
• tokenBodyField: Field in a request body to search for the jwt. Default is auth_token.
• tokenQueryParameterName: Query parameter name containing the token. Default is auth_token.
• authScheme: Expected authorization scheme if token is submitted through the HTTP Authorization header. Defaults to JWT
• passReqToCallback: If true the request will be passed to the verify callback. i.e. verify(request, jwt_payload, done_callback).

verify is a function with args verify(jwt_payload, done)

• jwt_payload is an object literal containing the decoded JWT payload.
• done is a passport error first callback accepting arguments done(error, user, info)

An example configuration:

var JwtStrategy = require('passport-jwt').Strategy;
var opts = {}
opts.secretOrKey = 'secret';
opts.issuer = "accounts.examplesoft.com";
opts.audience: "yoursite.net";
passport.use(new JwtStrategy(opts, function(jwt_payload, done) {
    User.findOne({id: jwt_payload.sub}, function(err, user) {
        if (err) {
            return done(err, false);
        }
        if (user) {
            done(null, user);
        } else {
            done(null, false);
            // or you could create a new account
        }
    });
}));

Authenticate requests

Use passport.authenticate() specifying 'jwt' as the strategy.

app.post('/profile', passport.authenticate('jwt', { session: false}),
    function(req, res) {
        res.send(req.user.profile);
    }
);

Include the JWT in requests

The strategy will first check the request for the standard Authorization header. If this header is present and the scheme matches options.authScheme or 'JWT' if no auth scheme was specified then the token will be retrieved from it. e.g.

Authorization: JWT JSON_WEB_TOKEN_STRING.....

If the authorization header with the expected scheme is not found, the request body will be checked for a field matching either options.tokenBodyField or auth_token if the option was not specified.

Finally, the URL query parameters will be checked for a field matching either options.tokenQueryParameterName or auth_token if the option was not sepcified.

Tests

npm install
npm test

License

The MIT License

Copyright (c) 2015 Mike Nicholson