ident-express

Ident Express

Adds ident authentation to your express.js routes.

How to use (in CoffeeScript):

checkIdent = require 'ident-express'
app.get '/foo', checkIdent, (req, res) ->
  # Do something with req.ident
  console.log "I think you are " + req.ident

Ident

Ident is described in RFC 1413. One important thing to note is that the information returned by identd should only be trusted if you trust the machine running the identd, which is the machine from which the connection has been made (the user/browser/service that is making the GET/POST/PUT request).

nginx

If your express.js app is behind a reverse-proxy such as nginx then the IP address that express.js sees will be those of nginx, not of the original HTTP request that was made to nginx. nginx can set headers that reveal the real IP address. Ident express will make use of the headers X-Real-Port, X-Real-IP, X-Server-Port which can be set by using the following fragment of nginx config:

proxy_set_header X-Real-Port $remote_port;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Server-IP $server_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Server-Port $server_port;